


I Slept My Way To This Post

by Chastity



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Dark Elves, F/M, Gender Role Reversal, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chastity/pseuds/Chastity
Summary: A young drow boy in a matriarchal society strives to reach the greatest heights he can. Currently on hiatus.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

My name is Ephaliat, and I have been dead for twenty thousand years, ever since the light was cleaved from the darkness, the water from the land.

My body, a titanic mass of tendrils and tentacles emanating from my single brilliant eye, was buried beneath the earth by my killers, where it laid forlorn for millennia. One of those killers turned on her kin, and for it was maimed and forced into exile; she scurried beneath the surface alongside her worshipers to find my body, and baptized them in my thick black blood, that they might grow strong.

Thus came to be the civilization of the dark elves. During an annual ceremony, every child of thirteen years was engulfed in my ichor, staining their waxy pale skin an obsidian black, gifting them with some element of my former powers over light and darkness.

Yet, also, they gifted me some tiny fragment of their own power. Their blood flowed into me occasionally, by minor wounds that were ignored, by accidents and deaths that happened in my waters on occasion, and I supped at the chance for life. I drank greedily at every opportunity, leaving them gasping and sick after their submergence, but they never ceased their baptismal rites, even as they gave me the chance for consciousness once more.

Do not be confused. After thousands of years of this, I was still but a fraction of my old self. I could not raise the least part of my wounded, ripped-open body, could not stop a single babe from wandering into the thick molasses of my essence that had spilled throughout the cavern I was buried in.

So I prepared to leave. I waited for my opportunity, seeking a host of the best physique, breeding, and magical potential, and I found him after years of searching. A young boy named Ylantar, of the house Jehalaora. When he drew breath beneath my blood, a gasping surprised jerk, I thrust my consciousness in through his mouth, dug myself deep into the bowels of his being, and waited quietly. I stared out through his eyes as he was drawn from my body, listened through his ears to the words spoken by the people who treated my body as a thing killed in a sacred hunt by their goddess and given as fodder to them.

“Ylantar, why did you breathe?” The voice was stern and female. “You can get sick if you do a thing like that.”

“I’m sorry, mother,” he said, bowing his head almost obsequiously low. “It was colder than I was expecting.”

_Of course it’s cold. The whole world was cold when I yet lived._

The boy jerked his head at that, glancing around as he sought out the voice in question. I quieted myself, hid in the recesses of his mind. I might reveal myself to him, but not just yet. He eventually seemed to decide that he’d heard nothing, and quietly walked along with his mother back towards the home.

When they arrived at their home, his mother sending him off to his room, to be minded by one of the servants, I paid quiet attention to his behavior. Each scrape of his chair as he read through one of his family's codices, each hum as he put down the book to simply think over what he had read. Occasionally, he would take notes, making white marks on a black surface that was replaceable, as he sorted through things in his mind.

With each passing day, I insinuated myself ever deeper into his body, that I might not be removed were some magic to be used. I could not simply devour the boy from within - I was too weak even for that. Nor would I have - an animated corpse would have less magical power than a still-thriving Ylantar, less capacity to feign life and humanity.

It also gave me the chance to get an idea of these dark elves' civilization, their culture, their despicable religion about worshiping the woman who had killed me. One thing I couldn't help but notice was the matriarchy. Women made the decisions, men merely executed them. It made the decision to possess the boy… seem a little less wise, but I was unable to reverse course, and had to see it through to the end.

Besides - there were ways to work within this context that only a male host could. In societies dominated by men, women often seduced their way into high positions, did they not?

* * *

I saw and heard the boy's daily routine, and it quickly became clear that I had selected a good host, even if perhaps I should have selected a female one. He was clearly doted on by his mother, Llezina. Not in the sense that she spent much time with him - she surely did not - but in the sense that she clearly saw him as among her most capable children, and cultivated his talents appropriately. He had virtually free access to the family codices, as well as two separate tutors. One was Qilanna, a former military officer who was employed as the head of the family guard, with tightly-braided white hair, and a muscular, tall, yet buxom physique, whose job was to teach him swordplay.

The other, his magic teacher, was as new to him as she was to me. All the dark elves - or at least, the baptized among them - had a native talent for two spells, both of them derived from my essence. On the one hand, light, the luminous nature of my being which allowed me to see in the primordial darkness to which I was born. On the other, darkness, as the inky black of night, something I could spread at my will to hide myself from the sight of others. Neither had sufficed to stop their goddess from slaying me.

As such, while Ylantar had been working on his footwork and martial techniques for years now, he had _not_ been so diligent practicing magic until my presence entered him. And, given that his magic - the magic of all the dark elves - came from me? It should only be self-evident that he proved to be a true prodigy in the control and manifestation of light and darkness.

He was taught the basics of magic by his aunt, Aunrae va Jehalaora. She was a rather curvaceous and tall woman, quite beautiful, with her hair done back in a long, single braid. "You are doing very well," she would say, when he would accomplish what I was quite certain was well beyond the capacity of any normal boy his age. "Now, again, but more targeted this time," she declared, and together our wills drew light into a razor-thin cord that slipped through the air and poked at the wall. There was no mess, no spread of the light: it was an utterly perfect shot. "Hmm." She stepped towards the wall, brushing her finger through the space the light went as if to experiment and ensure he hadn't cheated. "It is decent."

It was absurd, is what it was. Aunrae had been quite taciturn and tight-fisted with her praise for Ylantar for all the time he had been training under her. I had worried and wondered if perhaps our combined efforts did not result in the level of apparent talent that I thought - if, perhaps, this world had moved on without me - but I had rather quickly seen what his sister, two years his elder, managed. He was, within thirty days or so of being immersed with me, doing much better than her after two full years.

Then I worried that perhaps she was suspicious of him, that she had some intuition that there was something unusual in how powerful and controlled his magic was. I tried to withdraw subtly, to lower his talents without making it obvious what I was doing, but that, too, didn't change her treatment of him. If anything, she became nicer, if only in the backhanded way one reserves for one's lessers: "That's perfectly good, don't worry." "It isn't like you've done anything wrong, people are just good at different things."

She was lowering him, intentionally avoiding offering him any praise for his successes. It irritated me, primarily because I'd spent a good deal of time, effort, and mental energy seeing if there had been some flaw of technique on my part, only to discover it was nothing more than some internal family squabble. I hadn't seen any conflict between Llezina and Aunrae, but the mortal beings that had grown up in my wake were inclined towards family rivalries.

 _She's talking down to you,_ I told him, when she next offered her vaguely-critical attack, something just mute enough that he could have claimed innocence were it pointed out, yet undeniably meant to suggest he was anything less than the most talented young sorcerer of his generation.

His lips twisted on his face for a moment, but otherwise his expression was subdued. This time, he didn't seem to wonder at where my voice had come from, confusing it with his own. Given his placid response, I concluded that he knew what Aunrae was doing. _I should practice on my own,_ I whispered, hoping that he would confuse that with his own thoughts. A teacher so wildly incompetently smothering as Aunrae was going to be a net negative on both of our ability to improve.

By the way he shifted his body weight, as if steeling himself to receive a blow, it appeared he had indeed resolved to practice on his own.

* * *

The first such practice session took place in his room, at night. He had a codex on the subject of the luminous magics, and a bit of light emanated from his palm. He would consult the codex, quietly change the light in its color, brightness, angle, heat, or other features, and hold it in whatever its new state was for a time, before carrying on to the next one.

The entire situation was quite opaque to me - what possible reason could his mother have to give him to a woman she had some rivalry with? Elves, no matter their breed, deeply loved their children. Even the mild cough and fatigue that had come with my entrance into Ylantar's body got her attention and care. After considering it, my focus half on aiding Ylantar in the development of his magic, I simply gave up. I had no idea.

Ylantar created a flicker like a candle, gently swaying to and fro in the room, and managed to affix it to the air before returning to reading. His focus was half on the text before him, half on the magic maintaining the candle light.

The text itself was focused on how, precisely, to twist and reshape the light my essence produced. Some, I must admit, were novel to me, but most were not, the simple change in hue or brightness born of modulations that I had performed a countless number of times in the past. Each time Ylantar occasioned to try a new variation, my will was with him, making it simpler, easier, a movement smooth and simple. He seemed pleased to manage them, and started to play with raising the brightness higher and higher.

Ylantar's room was on the second floor, a single window with a thick curtain occluding the outside world. The dark elves lived within excavated and preexisting caverns; oftentimes, the walls were themselves mere rock bed earth, cool to the touch most of the time. Ylantar had the privilege of a window, his view being that of a grand garden of fungus that grew on the Jehalaora estates. I say all this to establish the scene, as there was the meaty smack of meat against the rim of the window. _What's that?_ I asked, nudging him as subtly as I could manage to the possible intruder. _I should go get my mother._ It would be centuries at the least before I could gather the strength to take on a host again; I did not want to risk this one.

Instead of going to his mother, though, Ylantar immediately started to walk towards the window, shifting the curtain aside to reveal a young woman, maybe a few years his senior, with white hair cut short and vivid blue eyes, an easy smile on her lips as she clambered up inside the room with him. She had a fit physique, a modest bust, and an easy, boyish smile. She moved without hesitation, her legs swinging over the edge of the window sill, slipping it shut behind her. "How are things going with you, huh?"

"Don't you have work to be doing?" Ylantar asked, giving her a cold look. He knew her. That explained it.

She just chuckled. "Not really." It sounded almost like a shared joke, from the way she said it. "I'll be joining the army soon, I think. Become an officer."

"Didn't know they were letting lazy commoners become officers," Ylantar replied, absently opening and closing his fingers. "It's been over a month since you came by."

"It's so hard to get in here." She actually whined as she said it, rolling her shoulders. "Sorry I couldn't be there for your baptism, but, y'know."

"I know. It's very hard to do things when you're the biggest flake in the world."

"That's right!" She practically rushed forward to him, squeezing him in a tight hug, pinning his arms to his side. He just let out a long sigh, as if this was the most arduous experience of his life. "But I know you love me anyway, right, Illy?"

"Only in the sense one grows to love a three-legged puppy; out of a mix of pity and exasperation."

"I'll take it," she said, continuing to smush her body into his. I felt as much as he did the way his body naturally responded to her closeness, his erection absently pressing against her thigh. With his youth, she still had a few inches on him, but she held him like he was her baby brother, the same casual boredom that one expects of it. Still, she was provoking a base physical reaction in him, and in turn I felt the warmth of her own body rise, spotted out of the corner of Ylantar's eyes the way her eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're getting so big," she said, as she broke off the hug, smiling brilliantly at him.

"Maybe you're shrinking," he said, in a total deadpan, earning a giggle from her. It was obvious to me that she was attracted to him, and she'd spoken of going into the military. I knew even from my brief time with him that Ylantar would be entering the military in a few years; it was simply expected of young men of his social status, and he would be staying there for a decade before getting married off. It was part of the local custom. If he could make such a connection now... _I should make sure she'll help me in the military,_ I attempted. He just snorted.

That was enough to break off the hug. "Something funny?" She asked, almost pouting at him.

"Yeah. I just had the idea that you could be useful to me at some point, which is ridiculous."

"Yeah, probably," she agreed easily, flopping down onto the bed. "I really am thinking of joining the army, though. What else is there to do?"

"Start a household."

"Yeah, with all my fat stacks of coin," she said, kicking her legs. "Maybe with an officer's pension I could manage that."

"Better aim for a soldier's pension, I doubt you'll ever be seeing an officer's pension except from a distance."

"Probably not," she agreed amicably. I had the impression of their relationship that the girl was unerringly lazy, and the boy wished she wasn't, but cared for her anyway. Not in a romantic sense, though. "What are you doing in here anyway? Reading books?" She glanced at the still-open codex on his desk, and he went over to it, letting her look over her shoulder at the pages as she did so. "Studying magic? Don't you have a tutor to teach you it?"

"Aunt Aunrae is not a very efficacious teacher," he replied blandly.

"Whaaat? Isn't she like this amazing sorceress or something?"

He shrugged. "She's dragging my progress down. I'll continue attending lessons for Mother's sake, but I'm not wasting my time."

"You're my total opposite," the girl replied, shifting her position so she crossed her arms and rested them atop her head. "Vicolene the Lazy and Ylantar the Hard-Working."

"Diligent," he offered mildly.

"Vicolene the Diligent and Ylantar the Hard-Working."

"No, you-" he let out a sigh as he cut himself off. "Diligent means hard-working."

"But I already called you hard-working."

"Different word choices matter for this sort of thing, Vicolene. Some words sound more erudite than others."

"What's erudite mean?"

"Do you intend to become an officer with the vocabulary of a six year old?" He asked, shifting his head to glance halfway up at her.

"I didn't realize that we were gonna be tested on vocabulary instead of, like, tactics and stuff."

"I'm sure your talent with that is just as miserable," was his succinct reply, turning his attention back to the book in front of him.

"Yep!" She agreed easily.

She hummed pleasantly as she read the book from atop his head - he was quickly so engrossed that he paid no mind to the way she was balancing her weight atop him, until, after over an hour, he yawned and stretched, his fist clipping her chin in the process. She let out a hiss of pain. "Ow!"

"You're still here?" Ylantar asked, bewildered.

"Wow... first you get mad at me for not trying, then you get mad at me for trying too hard? Is that fair, you think?"

"I'll get mad at you for whatever I want. I spoil you anyway."

She flopped down onto his bed then, lying on one side. "You're right. Where are my grapes?" She demanded from where she lay.

"They're right up your ass," he countered. "Grapes are way too expensive to waste even a single one on you. Even I don't get to eat them unless we have guests."

"Aren't I a guest?"

"Guests that anybody cares about impressing," he corrected, a slight smirk appearing on his lips. She let out a feigned noise of pain from the bed.

"I'm being bullied by a boy who's barely a month past his baptism... if my mother were here today, she'd be so ashamed."

"Your mother is a servant in this very home."

"Yes, but she's not _here_ ," Vicolene countered with an intense gesture to the room as a whole.

He let out a long sigh. "How am I supposed to work with you here?"

"You were working with me here for a whole hour while I was left to just stare down at the book," she declared, stretching her body and letting out a faint groan. "Just forget my presence."

"How can I forget it when you won't shut up?" He said mildly, but turned his gaze back to his book soon enough, the candle light beginning to shift slowly through each hue, moving at a sedate, regular, carefully formed pace as he made sure to make it every color in the rainbow and then start again from the beginning, keeping his pace steady and consistent all the while. He had some help from me, of course, but if he didn't have a clear and focused mind, I doubt I could have managed to get the magic working as well as it was.

At some point, she came over to rest her forearms atop his head again. He let out only the briskest of sighs before becoming absorbed in his studies again, carefully making little calculations on the small tablet to his side.

She left us alone for the night, at the least.

* * *

Aunrae was inspecting his work again. In this case, it was a light that was meant to blind, providing him with a decent chance of taking advantage of his enemies' sudden weakness. The disabling elements of light and dark were among the first ones that young dark elves were taught, for the obvious reason: more elaborate techniques had the risk of not being grasped quickly enough, or not being efficacious in a fight if they weren't entirely made instinctual. Further, something meant to blind rather than to harm carried less risk of some child inadvertently causing permanent damage.

Naturally, with my assistance, Ylantar had mastered it almost instantly, simply drawing up his hand and releasing the burst of blinding light. Over Aunrae's eyes lay a thin film of darkness, as if she were in shadows but only there; a simple method of ensuring one's eyes were protected from the potential damage that an overly-bright burst might create.

She didn't betray any particular feelings, as the light rapidly faded away. "That was much too bright. You could easily do permanent damage, with that luminosity."

 _Ridiculous. That was perfectly safe._ My host, however, simply gave a mute nod. "Let me try it again, then." Aunrae nodded, and he let out another, significantly lighter burst of luminous energy - one slight enough that I doubted it would produce any blinding at all. Perhaps they wouldn't like to look at it, but I could hardly imagine it would actually blind anyone.

"Better. Keep at that level, perhaps even a bit smaller," she said. "Remember, anyone who hasn't specifically protected their eyes is in danger - not just your target. Be sure to use it in such a way that it only blinds your enemy, whether that be by warning your allies or positioning yourself carefully." Her lessons were an odd mix of useful advice and obvious attempts to get Ylantar to underperform. It was increasingly obvious that she was intentionally sabotaging Ylantar's education; for what specific vagary of dark elf internal politics, I could hardly guess. She didn't seem to have some other student she favored over Ylantar.

When we finished with the day's lessons, Ylantar having been taught to do everything that Aunrae could justify in such a manner by half-measures, he returned to his bedroom to continue his studying in private. _She was lying about your magic being too dangerous._ He just let out a quiet sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I know," he mumbled, likely to himself, given that he showed no other sign of realizing my presence as a distinct entity. "She is teaching me the basics of it in a practical manner... Mother wouldn't want me to come complaining to her at the first sign of trouble." He rubbed the side of his head, talking to himself as he ran through the entire situation. Rather helpful for me, since I was still missing much of the context.

"Ideally she would start to teach me properly, but I don't know how I can make her do that. I am a man, after all." _Why can't a man do it?_ Since he was already talking to himself, he didn't even seem concerned. "Men are generally not expected to learn much more than the rudiments of sorcery. Aunt Aunrae was a prodigy when she was younger, and is still well-known today. If my natural talent provoked only a negative response - and my brief failing a positive one - then she has to be doing it on purpose."

I listened to him carefully as he paced in his room, speaking in careful, precise language. "The most likely reason I can think of is simply that she doesn't like the idea of a man performing so well. Particularly if I wind up going on to exceed her. That means I'd have to convince her it wasn't shameful to be beaten by a man in sorcery, which... isn't true."

 _Isn't true?_ I had as yet remained ignorant to the particulars of the dark elves' culture.

He paused at that, as if some fresh new thought was occurring to him. "If I can convince her men can be excellent sorcerers, that there's no shame in being outdone by one... _if_ I can convince her. Yet if I could, somebody else could. And they didn't." He sighed at that point, sitting down on the edge of the bed as he massaged his temples. "I don't know what to do. I can't simply complain to Mother, she arranged this."

_Can't you?_

He paused again, seeming to weigh that thought in his mind carefully. "Hmm... no, no. It wouldn't work. Aunt Aunrae hasn't done anything explicit in her teaching; I would just be considered an ungrateful child. Perhaps I could have another tutor arranged, in a way that saves Aunt Aunrae face?"

There was the sound of flesh against the window sill. Ylantar stiffened, sitting up straight and glancing at the curtains as Vicolene once more dragged herself up and over the edge. "Ah, good, it's just you," she said, smiling as she saw him.

 _Could she be useful for this somehow?_ I didn't know the specifics of the situation, but Vicolene seemed quite personally loyal to Ylantar, so...

"Do you still plan on joining the army or have you given it up already?"

"I've said that I'm going to join the army many times," Vicolene replied with faux offense, touching her hand to her chest. "I'm not going to just give it up like that."

"Then I would like to offer you my support in achieving your goals." Ylantar wore a broad, probably fake smile; Vicolene certainly did not seem overly pleased to see it.


	2. Chapter 2

To meet with his own mother required Ylantar to arrange it. It was scheduled three days in advance, a short, brisk meeting in a rather palatial office. His mother was tall and slender, with dark skin that edged into a purple hue, long white hair that was done in a trio of braids that trailed down her back. "What is it that is so important you could not speak through servants?" His mother asked, her tone sharp but calm. She wished to know because it mattered to her, not because she was annoyed.

"Vicolene plans to join the army."

"Who is Vicolene?"

"The daughter of Narcelia," he offered. "One of your servants, the one with the large-" he made a hand sign, and his mother nodded in recognition.

"I see. And what interest is it of mine?"

"I would like to request she be given some tutoring in magic."

"For a commoner girl?" His mother asked, her expression sharpening, now seeming truly annoyed with him. "We are still looking into marriage matches, and while a boy on campaign can be forgiven for indiscretion, one beneath his mother's skirts cannot."

"I can assure you, mother, I have no interest in Vicolene from that perspective. I was planning to sit in on her lessons, to ensure they are of the highest quality possible."

His mother leaned back in her seat, gently raising one hand to her lips to cover her mouth as she considered his words. What he was not saying, as much as what he was. "And, I presume, you would not like Aunrae to be this tutor, since she is so busy with your education?"

"Yes, Mother."

She moved her hand so that she was lacing her fingers together, staring forward as her mouth was covered up by them. "I will arrange it. Is that all?"

"Yes, Mother," he said, rising with a deep bow.

As he turned to leave, his mother spoke. "One thing I would note," she stated, clearly and purposefully. "If there should be an egregious incident during Vicolene's education, or for that matter your own, you should speak to me as quickly as possible."

"I understand, Mother."

Family politics among dark elves was really far too much, in my view.

* * *

Vicolene's teacher was not nearly as prestigious as Aunrae, but an older commoner man named Wehlor with military experience and a certain dull, workmanlike quality to him. He would proceed through each part of the process with a bloody-minded focus, declaring that one had to do this, then that, then this, then that. There was no particular subtlety or nuance, but it was functional, minimalist, with all the sorts of little tips and tricks one obtained by practical applications and minor corrections on the basis of noting some fault or other.

It was honestly a better fit for Ylantar's developing level of skill. He watched for the first few sessions, quiet in the corner, Wehlor somewhat stiff-necked from the presence of a noble boy seeming to be evaluating his every teaching. On the fifth session, he spoke up. "May I participate as well?"

"Hm?" Wehlor seemed genuinely surprised, glancing around the room for a moment as if looking for what might have set Ylantar off. "You sure about that?"

"Quite certain, thank you," he said, with a gentle smile. "Your style is very different from my own teacher-" namely in the sense that it was competent "-and I would like to diversify my learning as much as possible."

"I'm not sure what I can teach a noble boy, but I'll do my best, sir," he said, adding the last bit in as if he'd just remembered the boy's social status.

"Great, now I'm not gonna just have you watching, but I'm going to be getting destroyed in a competition, too," Vicolene said, with a long-suffering sigh. Her own magical skills were genuinely abysmal, despite the age difference. It was as if she'd started a month or two ago, without the assistance of a being such as myself, rather than having had the chance to practice for several years. "Puhh," she sighed, leaning forward.

"Let's do the basics of a night light again. You want it pure red," Wehlor explained, raising one hand, a faint, luminous red glow emerging from it. A puttering little pink thing emerged from Vicolene's hand. "Let's see yours, sir," he said, glancing at Ylantar.

Ylantar raised his hand, and a gentle red glow stretched out from it, rushing across the barren floor like a tide sweeping out.

"That's good. I guess you are already being taught by somebody else. Sir." Wehlor seemed to consider for the moment, glancing at Vicolene, wondering if he should maintain the current level of training, or adjust upward for Ylantar's sake.

"Just teach Vicolene. I'm not here to interrupt her education, but to assist in it."

"Alright then," Wehlor said, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. "Back to it."

* * *

Vicolene was not nearly so talented as Ylantar, naturally, but now that she was being properly taught, she was quickly developing her magical abilities. From time to time, Wehlor would even teach her some combat basics. It was more the sort of easy pickings that come at the start of one's learning than the deep knowledge of a true veteran or master, but she was building a firm foundation for army life.

That was one thing I had come to learn, in my time observing the dark elves up close: it was expected that one would be trained before entering the military. By a single master, no less, the master/apprentice relationship helping to pass down the military distinctions that often formed in the army. Untrained commoners could enter the army, of course, but they would not be likely to ever receive any special distinctions. Even women - thought of by the dark elves as particularly level headed and the only ones suited to command - could only succeed if they showed at least a modest degree of physical and magical talent, and for any serious position they would need to show their abilities at various games of strategy. (The less prominent positions only required literacy, something that Vicolene also lagged on.)

In any case, my conclusion - seemingly shared by my host - was that Vicolene had actually proven to have quite the good foundation for a soldier, and would probably manage some decent position. Given her rather lazy personality, it was unlikely for her to rise too high, but it was always good to have friends in the military before you joined. Any members of House Jehalaora would be supportive of Ylantar.

Elves are like all the modern things that walk upon this world: in need of sex to propagate themselves. As such, like so many others, they have instincts to reproduce. The women lead and decided upon the sex lives of the men in their society, but the men were hardly without desires. Stories were told of bold romances and strange couplings, with both tragic ends and happy ones. They were, in short, obsessed with sex - and by extension, obsessed with those who gave it to them.

Vicolene was not some sexless girl. On one occasion when she snuck into Ylantar's room and discovered him shirtless, she clearly showed quite a response - despite his still-growing body, he was quite handsome and muscular due to all the exercise he was getting with his martial practice.

I understood well that Vicolene would hardly be the most useful political ally in the years to come, but, she could at least be a little useful - and it would be a useful for Ylantar to learn how to seduce and make love to a woman now, rather than later. As such, I began to quietly stoke the fires of lust in my host's body, when he would see Vicolene twist or stretch or leap or do any of a dozen other things. Up until then, his lusts had been quite confined due to his youth, the occasional tumescence of his length at some woman's body pressing against his.

Now? Now he was for the first time masturbating. It was an exquisitely pleasant sensation, one that instantly made me understand why mortals became so utterly obsessed with it. Even the gods were said to have lovers and affairs, and if it felt half as good for them as this did for me, it would be incredibly worth it. As he masturbated, he faintly muttered the name of Vicolene, appearing to be developing a degree of sexual obsession with her...

Which unfortunately did not filter into _action_ on its own. Certainly, he looked at her body quite regularly, as if committing its every curve and contour to memory for future use. But he did not touch her, did not ask her for intimacy, simply admired her body from afar. It was frustrating, but it did demonstrate that I had made the right choice in experimenting in such a low-risk environment: if he had been so recalcitrant with an important target, that would have been very problematic. For a time, I was content simply to arouse him whenever he laid eyes upon Vicolene, but it clearly wasn't working in the least bit.

So, after one more session of frantic, lonely masturbation, the occasional hiss of Vicolene's name escaping his lips, I quietly whispered something into his mind: _I should actually do something to sleep with her._ He was inclined to talk through his thoughts when he was alone, so as he settled down on the bed, I waited for him to start talking. "It would be improper if we were found out." _It would be improper if it was found out Vicolene was sneaking into my room._ "Well... yes, I suppose I am already in trouble if anyone discovered us, and this is getting quite crazy. Next time she comes in, I'll bring it up."

* * *

The next time she snuck in through the window, I kicked Ylantar's sex drive into maximum, getting him immediately hard as he greeted her. "Vicolene. You know, you shouldn't keep breaking into a young boy's room. You could leave people with the wrong impression."

"It's just me," she replied with an idle wave of her hand. "Anyway, I make sure to never get caught, don't I?" He stepped towards her. He was an inch or two shorter than her even now, but he had bulk and muscle and a certain intimidation factor that made her take a step back, until she was practically pressed against the wall. "Whoa, what's the matter?"

"I'm the one who could have the wrong impression," he told her, reaching for her wrist. His grasp was gentle, almost loose, as he drew it towards his erection. She blinked rapidly, staring down at the hard thing in her hand through the layers of fabric. With her skin painted black from my ichor, I couldn't see any sign of the flush so common in an aroused female, but her response was obviously one of a woman who was at least somewhat interested.

"You're- it wouldn't be appropriate."

"Would it be any less appropriate if you were to be found lounging on my bed, or resting on my head, than if we were found in carnal acts?"

She bit her lip at that, seeming to consider it carefully, her breath through her nostrils soft and gentle. Her response was clearly that of a woman sincerely considering doing it. "What brought this on?"

"I can't stop thinking about you," Ylantar explained simply. It was more that he couldn't stop getting horny every time he saw her than that, but such niceties were part of courtship. "You're so beautiful..."

"It's just I'm the only girl near your age you get to see that isn't a relative," Vicolene tried to argue - but she did not remove her hand from his groin, her fingers gently, tenderly wrapped around his shape through the fabric of his trousers.

"It isn't that," he said with a firmness that left no room to argue. In fairness, it wasn't that - it was that I thought she would make a good ally to cultivate, and a good woman to practice awakening Ylantar's lusts upon. "I like you for you."

I could see the slightly-shy way that Vicolene responded to those words, the wilting of her resistance in the face of such unbridled affection. I wondered if she had feelings for Ylantar in the past. "It could create an enormous scandal for you if I got pregnant..." she said, but it wasn't in the way of an argument. Rather, she descended to her knees right in front of Ylantar, quietly pulling down his trousers, making his hard cock pop out. "If it gets like this again, I can handle it like this..." She gave a soft kiss to the tip of his dick, glancing up at him as if searching for approval.

"I don't want you to just 'handle it'," he said. "I want you to do it because you like me too."

She let out a soft laugh. "You must think really low of me if you think I would do this for any man who asked."

"Or maybe any noble boy whose room you'd stolen into," he corrected. "If you don't want to-"

He couldn't finish the thought, the act of little pride to try to assure Vicolene's consent, because Vicolene wrapped her lips around his tip and began to swallow him up, a slow movement of wet flapping tongue and heavy spit and saliva. Her mouth slid down his length inch by inch, and her eyes gazed up at him, blue eyes full of love and affection and earnest desire. Yes, she definitely had feelings for Ylantar before this point. By the pleasant hum of her mouth around his length, she was clearly enjoying herself, softly breathing through her nose as she twisted her head back and forth.

She was almost pressed up against the wall from when Ylantar had first approached her. I sat back and quietly let whatever would happen, happen; I needed to see exactly what Ylantar would do, when given the chance at sexual intimacy, so I could guide him to use it for his own advantage rather than simply to brutishly and brusquely take what he needed or wanted.

Fortunately, he did seem to have quite a bit of self control. While his fingers ran through Vicolene's ivory white hair, occasionally clenching up, he did not move to drive her face down his cock, letting her content herself with the upper half of his length. One of her dark, feminine hands came up, softly stroking him where his length wasn't drawn into her mouth. All the while, she stared up at him, their eyes locked, a silent exchange of feelings that was made all the clearer by the way that she licked and played with his cock in her mouth.

"This only feels good for me," Ylantar panted softly, his voice almost a whine. It was good he had such concern for his partner's feelings. It would only serve him well in the future. "Can I do anything, to make you feel good?"

She hummed around his cock, giving it a playful few laps against the underside, before popping back. "This feels good for me too, Ylantar," she told him, before playfully wrapping her lips back around his cock, wiggling her eyebrows. She was astoundingly eager at this point - I definitely had made the right choice when I had decided to use sexuality to gain the leverage I wanted Ylantar to hold. If he could produce such feelings by sexual intimacy with other women, there was no doubt that soon enough, he would be standing astride the whole of dark elven society, with me offering a bit of assistance.

The pleasure reached me as well, of course. It felt fantastic, absolutely wonderful, a wet warm place to snugly fit his length. Given how astounding this felt compared to masturbation, I could understand how mortals became so attached to it, and to those who gave them it. Ylantar reached up with one hand, biting on a bit of his palm to quiet his voice. _Perhaps you should turn out the light_ , I whispered into his mind, and a moment later he reached out with one hand, the light inside the room turning instantly dark as an inky black part of my essence congealed around the faintly flickering candle.

The room was now pitch black. There was only sensation and sound to go by, the sight of Vicolene completely denied to Ylantar. She seemed to like it, even, by the way her pace on his cock got more intense, wet sloshing noises coming up from between his legs as she noisily slurped and drooled upon his cock. His length thrust deep into her mouth, starting to ram into the back of her throat, making her sputter and gag, speckles of saliva hitting his thighs as she worked. Despite that, she continued to push forward, trying her best to collect his whole length in her throat, gagging wetly as she did so.

I believe part of the reason she became particularly intense in the dark is that there was no risk that, were there to be a mess, she would wind up being seen in some embarrassing new light. As such, she could gag and sputter as many times as it took. Ylantar's hands were soon pressed against the wall, as he was rendered increasingly unable to control himself; even that measure lost its efficacy as he drove Vicolene backward, until her head pressed against the wall as well, his hips bucking back and forth, making her choke and sputter wetly on his cock, groaning and gasping.

It was unfortunate, since it was hardly the most loving method of fucking, but Vicolene would not be politically valuable - it was best he got this sort of energy out on her, than some woman he actually wanted to control and manipulate towards his own ends. Each wet thud of his cock against the back of her throat was accompanied by a gag from the girl beneath him, but she didn't resist. In fact, her fingers began to gently brush along his thighs, as if to reassure him that she wasn't angry at all.

All well and good for this situation, but I would definitely have to break him out of these habits.

That was something that could be handled later, though. It felt absolutely amazing, particularly when he finally managed to slam his cock past her gag reflex and just bury his entire length inside her throat. Then, her gags became not a thing representing resistance and struggle, but something wet and wondrous around his length, a repetitive gripping and squeezing of his length. The muffled noises she let out around his length, too, were delicious, sweet music to the ears. It took hardly any time at all for him to begin coming, groaning and letting out a sweet sigh of "Vicolene..." as he found release inside her throat.

When he was completely spent, he pulled back, letting her suck in deep heaving breaths, and tucking his cock back in his pants and letting light flood the room again. Vicolene's beautiful blue eyes widened as she was exposed to light, her dark skin now stained with spit and tears from choking on his cock - and one hand caught in her groin. She did her best to make herself presentable, only a muttered complaint escaping her lips at being caught like that.

"That was really great," he told her. "It was... amazing. Just... so good. So much better than my hand. I'm sorry for losing control near the end there," he added, and I could feel the pang of regret, knew he wasn't just saying it.

"It's fine," Vicolene said. "It was kind of hot, the way you just totally lost it. I hardly had to do anything, too, since at that point you were doing all the work."

He let out a laugh at that, patting her head. "There's lazy, and then there's you, Vicolene," he told her.

"Terrible way to talk to a girl you just choked on your cock."

He just laughed at that, flicking her head with a single finger. "Sorry. There's lazy, there's really lazy, and then there's Vicolene."

She let out a small noise of faux offense.

* * *

Wehlor's drilling of Vicolene focused on magic, but it was inevitable it would cross over into the martial elements of things as well. After all, he was a soldier, and Vicolene had no combat training whatsoever. He focused on the simple fundamentals, whereas Qilanna's tutoring involved more elegant footwork and clever swordplay, reading one's opponent and seeking out opportunities.

"It is a dance move," Qilanna explained, with a gentle flourish of her blade in the air. "An elegant interception of the opponent's blade, pressing it to one side to leave them exposed. Each movement is a delicate act, no excess or defect, perfect in each curve. It must be repeated until it is second nature."

Ylantar nodded in understanding, attempting the move himself. Qilanna began to stab at him, and he diverted her blade this way and that. He had developed some skill at it over their training, and my puissance had raised his strength and speed to a limited degree as well, letting him manage to parry her quite well. After only two minutes, she paused in her offensive, stepping back.

"We will take a moment to recuperate; the body is not a rock that can roll downhill until it finds its level. We must pace ourselves appropriately, lest we waste our time overmuch. Do you have any more intellectual inquiries?" She asked, as she collected a cup of water and began to drink it quite heavily.

"You teach fighting very differently from Wehlor."

"Wehlor?" She asked, with a faint frown, putting down her cup.

"He's teaching Vicolene, at my request to mother."

"Ah." She tilted her head to one side. "Wehlor is a common soldier, the brick and mortar on which all armies are based. He teaches conservative, regular movements, like the workings of a clock. You, on the other hand, are a noble," she said, gathering up her training blade again and pointing it at Ylantar . "It is not enough to be the cog that twists the hours' hand. You must be exceptional, and distinguish yourself, or else find yourself having failed your family. He only needs to come back to his. Now, let us begin again," she said, sword striking out towards Ylantar, at first with relatively light thrusts, then forcing a more thorough, aggressive style against Ylantar, eventually overpowering his defenses and sending him tumbling to the ground.

"Get up, and pay closer attention to my footwork this time. Don't watch my blade, that twitches in a heartbeat from hip to shoulder; watch my eyes, my arms, my legs, for they necessarily precede each action the blade takes." As if to demonstrate, she made a few quick back and forth movements of her wrist that sent her training blade slashing from side to side.

"Yes, Qilanna," he said. "I appreciate your efforts." Qilanna gave the slimmest smile at that, just a momentary thing, before resuming her aggressive series of attacks.

* * *

With a different teacher to give him solid basics in magic, Ylantar could begin to appear meek and incompetent with Aunrae. She, thus, became quite encouraging, assuring him that it was not too surprising he could not manage this or that on his first try, and that he needed simply to try again. In some ways, he learned faster this way, since she seemed less inclined to give him outright _bad_ advice. She was still certainly not trying very hard to teach him, though.

Vicolene became the subject of numerous sexual experiments on the part of young Ylantar, though they avoided coitus proper. Fellatio, cunnilingus, intercrural, all the common debaucheries were experimented with as children playing. Ylantar grew stronger and taller with each passing month, until, a full year after my entrance into his body, he stood a full head taller than Vicolene. Their affections were intense, and, unfortunately, sometimes dipped into the world outside the walls of his room.

"I'm glad to hear you'll be entering the service of our great city," Wehlor said, as Vicolene and Ylantar approached him for training. "Otherwise I might have worried that I'd be training you for nothing. That doesn't apply to you, of course, sir; my services are entirely at your discretion."

Vicolene simply blinked in confusion at the statement Wehlor had made. "I... do plan on serving in the army, yes, but not soon."

"Oh? The Lady Llezina seemed to suggest it was close to time for you to go, and that I ought to ensure that any 'holes are plugged up,' though she didn't quite put it that way."

"Ah." Vicolene's statement left little doubt as to what was happening - Ylantar's mother was making good on her promise, likely in part to preserve the chastity of her son. I did quiet his sex drive as best I could when occasionally it seemed as if he were considering coitus, but his mother surely didn't know as much. "I understand. Let's continue with training, then?"

"Naturally. You've done well - Ylantar's a prodigy or somesuch, don't compare yourself to him," he said, with a lazy smile, raising one hand into the air, a thin trail of light beginning to emanate from his fingertips.

Neither Ylantar nor Vicolene were particularly productive students that day.

* * *

Ylantar did ask to speak to his mother about the matter of Vicolene's military service, but it was an entirely vain enterprise, hardly worth mentioning. It went precisely as you expect: he politely suggested that perhaps Vicolene could continue to stay in the household a while longer, and his mother politely stated that perhaps she could, but that was not what was going to happen.

The pair got much more regularly intimate with one another in the two weeks they had together than they had before, and likely would have violated chastity were it not for my intervention. If they noticed that Ylantar had a tendency to feel enervated whenever they approach the act of sex proper, they did not comment upon it.

Soon enough, though, Vicolene was headed out to join the army, unable to disobey her mother's employer, particularly after she had received genuine and valuable training. His mother permitted him to continue to train with Wehlor to "ensure continued grasp of the fundamentals"; Aunrae took little offense, perhaps considering it impossible that a commoner could truly improve on Ylantar's sorcery, or perhaps considering it impossible a male could.

Of course, Ylantar did not handle having his source of sexual relief and intimacy taken away from him particularly well.


	3. Chapter 3

There are two senses in which sexual desire is produced in the intelligent races that rule this world. The first is libido, a biological drive that compels the body to have sex just as it might be compelled to eat or drink or sleep. The second is lust, the condition of desire that can be provoked by any number of things. Just as a mortal might seek food because he is hungry, or because it tastes good and he enjoys eating, so too might a mortal seek sex because it has been a long time, or because it is pleasurable and he enjoys it. Gluttons are defined by their eating purely for the pleasure of it; so too are lechers.

I had raised Ylantar's libido at key moments to ensure his relationship with Vicolene became sexual. I could - and did - just as easily lower it, but that did not affect his lusts. He had found that sex was enjoyable and desirable. He had used it to burn off stress, to handle negative emotions, and simply as habit. Now, with Vicolene's absence, sex was unavailable to him.

He was ornery, emotional, and it was clear that it was primarily due to the absence of sexual activity. After considering the females he knew, my mind went to Qilanna - she was a former military officer and a highly-ranked member of household staff. A sexual relationship with her would be beneficial to him in terms of his position in the family, and also fairly easy to maintain, since their training sessions were purely between the two of them and they had yet to be interrupted.

I did the simple thing of raising his libido when they were alone together, but he did not take the chance despite several repetitions. I determined that, just as lowering libido could not prevent him from having sex, raising it also could not force him to. He was certainly more than _aware_ of the effect his teacher was having on her - his eyes would occasionally wander her toned body, and when once he chanced upon her in a relative state of undress (wearing a light top and leggings as she had been preparing for bed), he went back to his room to masturbate and spoke her name in a hushed voice. He simply did not actually do anything with her.

_I should try to seduce Qilanna_ , I thought to him, one night after a particularly intensive bout of arousal. His ability to fight had suffered due to the mix of the physical obstacle of his erection, and the mental obstacle of his distraction. He seemed to consider it. "I don't want to get her in trouble. They would think she was taking advantage of me." He rolled over on one side, letting out a soft breath. _I need sex. Ever since Vicolene left, I can't stand it. Qilanna is beautiful and available. I should seduce her._ He bit his lip at the thought, clearly still hesitant, but considering. _How can I make Qilanna mine?_

That provoked his quiet way of talking to himself, muttering and considering. "I would have to seduce her, but it would have to be in a way that wouldn't be noticed. I could do it during our training sessions, but we couldn't have sex during them, not without costing me the martial skills I'll need to succeed." _I could ask for more training sessions with her, and choose odd hours and isolated locations._ "Is there any reason that wouldn't work? Maybe Mother wouldn't let me. Could I contrive a situation with Aunrae to give me an excuse? No, she's kept it subtle, I don't know how I'd manage that..."

Eventually, he settled on using implication when he asked his mother for a new room. _Suggest_ that Aunrae was the problem, but let his actual words be factually correct: he wanted to have a more private, secluded location to train, and a second session to work on it. Aunrae might actually try to cause problems for him, if her sabotage wasn't a matter of personal pride but was instead some kind of political gambit.

Of course, that was only to come _after_ he had actually seduced Qilanna. For now, he simply lay in bed and satisfied himself with his hand.

* * *

They had spent two hours training, on and off. Qilanna sat across from him, rolling her shoulders, her skin ebony with my ichor and glistening with sweat. She sipped her water, clearing away her throat and exhaustion as she gulped down a copious quantity of the stuff. Ylantar's eyes were drawn to the bob of her neck, and I was certain that his mental focus was on the similarity of the movement to the way that, say, Vicolene would gulp down his cum after fellating him.

"Do you have any lovers, Qilanna?" Ylantar asked her, making the older women turn his way and let out a small laugh.

"It is a rare thing, to find a lover of appropriate social status, for one such as myself. I will likely marry as the fly to the bot." That is a turn of phrase meaning 'below one's rank.' "I still quest for a lover, but, more like than not, that mission shall fail and I shall marry some good specimen of farmer or house servant."

Ylantar nodded, listening along to her words - then he placed his hand on her thigh. The movement was an unmistakable one, combined with the context, but so subtle that it could be dismissed without either of them losing face. All she would have to do is shift her leg away from him, and, if she had, then Ylantar would have given up on her immediately.

Instead, she simply shifted her body to push her leg towards him, making his fingers slide down towards her inner thigh. She looked at him, a gentle smile on her lips, a certain quirk of her eyebrows that dared him to do more. _I should keep touching her._ Ylantar's fingers slid up her thigh, towards her sex. He began to gently rub at it through the fabric of her trousers, teasing it subtly, and earned a broad smile from Qilanna, who seemed almost predatory as her own hand went directly for his cock. I made absolutely certain that it was hard by the time she arrived there, and she smiled even more broadly at that.

"Have your eyes truly turned my way?" She breathed the words with unambiguous lust, staring directly into his eyes. His cock twitched. "You do me as great an honor as I can imagine," she told me.

"I- we can't get married," he said, quickly, his chivalry an idiotic move. If he was going to say that, he should at least wait until the sex itself was over, make it fait accompli.

"I am no blind and deaf dullard," Qilanna said. "I know." Her fingers squeezed around his cock, making his hips briefly shift, and she let out a melodious laugh. "You like it, hmm?" She started to stroke him off in his trousers. "If I make you come like this, we won't even need to get undressed, to risk being caught..." She teased the words at his ear, so close to him now that her breath tickled at his bare skin. He shook his head, trembling subtly, her fingers _very_ skilled in bringing on rather intense pleasure. It was only the fact that I was helping him that kept him from orgasming as she spoke, her fingertip trailing along his cockhead, giving it a subtle squeeze and top. "No? You want to let your pleasure flow into me? To father a bastard? I suppose I shall marry down regardless, so my husband-to-be would be forced to accept any youngling."

"There are ways that don't, require coitus. Or, silphium," he managed to sputter out.

She giggles at that. "Oh, someone has been learning. Dirty, dirty boy." She squeezed his cock anew, then pulled her hand back. "I cannot suffer being caught with the Lady's son's bare manhood in my mouth, or betwixt my breasts. I would certainly be flogged for such an impropriety, and perhaps worse, depending on the Lady's mood when she discovered."

"I can arrange for us to have privacy," Ylantar said, his voice in a rush.

Qilanna just smiled, no doubt imagining that this had all been her idea.

* * *

The premise of their current training was fairly simple: they would use one of the sheds further out in the fields to practice their fighting in. It would provide them with privacy, and not disturb others, because these practice sessions would take place late at night, forcing Ylantar to fight "while groggy." Such was the justification.

And, such was the fact. Qilanna battered away at Ylantar's defenses as he struggled to wake up quickly enough, a certain sluggishness to his movements that may have been hidden to him, but wasn't to me, or to Qilanna. "I cannot have you sluggish when awoken for battle; I must be able to make fair accounting of my time with you. We can make love when our practice is done. If you can beat me..." she challenged, with a lopsided, cocky smirk.

For most dark elven boys, the presumptuousness would have been offensive. Perhaps even with Ylantar himself. However, a bit of toying with his libido at the key moments kept that from becoming the case. His problem became having to fight with an erection, which soon solved itself, his eagerness sending blood rushing through his body. He tried to bring in some of his magic, but Qilanna was an experienced, dextrous spellweaver, and managed to defeat it - at least, until I let him use a far more boosted light spell, which managed to blind her even through her defenses of darkness for a second. More than long enough for Ylantar to send her tumbling to the ground.

She let out a gasp of surprise as she fell, but she managed to get a hand beneath her before she actually hit it. "Call," she said, the signal to stop the fight. She rose and shook herself clear. "Aunrae must be teaching you thoroughly. I've never seen such an intense light spell."

I knew it was no thanks to Aunrae, but Ylantar was keeping her failures as a teacher under wraps. "She is a competent spellweaver," he said, demurring on the actual specifics of the reason for his own successes. Natural (or "natural," as it was all down to me) talent.

"You impressed me. Perhaps I should have banned your use of that particular magic in our fight, since it isn't like you can use it on ceiling lurkers or tangle pillars." Two of the (many, many) forms of largely inert predators common to the lands down here; they carried a line of descent from the world of my day, when it was dark and black and cold, and their ilk dominated this far down. The dark elves who spoke without experience claimed the surface was incredibly dangerous; the dark elves who spoke with experience, claimed it was far more pleasant than this underworld, save perhaps the scalding brilliance of the sun, which even my ichor couldn't protect them from. "But. You won," she told him, and stepped towards him.

To help you fix Qilanna's image in your mind: imagine a muscular, tall, handsome woman; make her breasts just so large you cannot quite wrap your hands around them; age her into her late thirties; and braid her hair into a curl that goes in a circle round the back of her head. As with all the dark elves, of course, her skin had an ebony luster, and her hair was a silvery-white.

She began by simply removing Ylantar's pants, revealing his hard cock to the open air. She smiled as she saw it, fingers gently stroking up and down his length as she smiled sweetly up at him. "Look at this thing," she breathed. "So hard. So eager. Let's get you to come quick," she said, her free hand placed against the front of his cock, "so I don't have to worry about you simply spurting when we actually begin sex proper."

"If, you prefer it, that way," Ylantar replied, as her fingers' pace increased, until she was pumping her hand rapidly up and down. His cock made the occasional wet squelch, as her hands pressed the sweat this way and that. She teased the tip with her fingers, gripping around the very uppermost part, wrapping round the cockhead and making him groan in pleasure. If it hadn't been for my presence, my influence, he definitely would have come already - but he didn't.

She didn't realize that I was keeping him from orgasming, and just got more intense and insistent in the way she touched him. "I beg of you, Ylantar. Let loose your love upon me. Spray your hot seed across my fingers and palm." He just panted and tried his very best to do so, but I didn't let him. "You are more than welcome to, at the moment it pleases you. I'll use my tongue to clean it off. You'll see your white marks sprayed all along my dark skin," she told him, her voice practically dripping with lust. "Go ahead, I wish to see it, to feel it. This will be our first time together, do not resist the rush of pleasure early so that it comes upon you later."

"I really can't," he breathed out, shuddering. "I can come, but- not right now," he managed to explain. _Maybe it's because it's just her hand?_ I prompted. "M-maybe if you use more than your hand?"

She let out another gentle, almost maternal laugh at that. "Very well. Sit down," she said, pulling her hand back. His cock twitched wildly, and he sat. Among dark elves, a male managing to last for quite some time produced a sense of competition and insistence on the part of the women. Sex that didn't end in the man's ejaculation hardly even counted as sex; a woman who didn't manage to bring her lover off was a failure of a woman. But, mortals' minds are quite simple, and the more effort they spend on something, the more valuable it seems to them.

Though, of course, I had also come to enjoy the physical sensations of sex. Qilanna was soon kneeling before him, stroking him at her own face, tempting me to release my control simply to stain her features with his cum. I resisted, though, and in short order she leaned forward, wrapping her lips around the very tip of his cock. Her cheeks hollowed as she simply _sucked_ , her hand upon his cock frantically pounding up and down. The powerful sensation of suction would surely have driven him over the edge - if it hadn't been for me.

Ylantar was by this point trembling with exertion, his fingers clawing at the seat beneath him as he strained to come but was prevented to by me. Qilanna, seeing that her suction strategy (however pleasant it may have been) was not working, began to dive down his cock, taking it inch by inch into her mouth and throat. Her throat swelled, her tongue flattening out to really invite his cock deep inside, and soon enough, she was pressed into his pelvis. He was hairless down there, as her nostril smushed into his pelvic bone, her face contorting in lewd ways as she did so. The suckling motion of her mouth around his cock, her throat swallowing around his length, it felt so very extremely good.

I didn't let him come. He was gasping desperately. "Come, want to, n, aah," he was muttering with raw desperation. I was enjoying the physical sensation of the inside of Qilanna's throat, and the longer this went on, the more desperate she would feel to ensure that he came.

Qilanna behaved as I expected: when choking herself on his cock, swallowing wetly and flapping her tongue against the underside, failed to manage to produce an orgasm, she slid off his length, letting out a wet gasp. "You seem to have true difficulty orgasming," she said, with a faint frown. "Let's try this," she said, starting to lick along his length, running her tongue from his base to his tip, smearing spit across it and half-occluding her face in the movement, while her hands moved to remove her top, quickly stripping it bare, tossing it aside. Her breasts were perky, full, round, seeming to utterly defy gravity, and she popped back to let his dick flop back down to where her face had been. She smiled vividly up at him, hands grasping her own breasts, and smushing them around his cock.

"Wh-what?" He sputtered, having never seen this particular position before.

"It's called a titfuck, among the soldiery," she told him, leaning forward to lick and suckle at the very tip of his cock. Her breasts felt absolutely delightful, all her earlier licking and sucking meaning that his cock was thoroughly lathered up in spit for this very moment. Her hands clasped tight around her breasts, fingertips lacing together near the tip, and she looked up at him as she suckled fiercely on the very tip of his cock, her lips stretching out obscenely, her cheeks turning hollow from the movement.

I let him come, then. He erupted in a continuous geyser. Qilanna's eyes widened at the sheer quantity of his seed, as it sprayed all through the inside of her mouth, clinging to her palate, smearing across the back of her mouth, clogging up her throat, leaving its tang upon her tongue. I felt as she hungrily swallowed down every last drop, and Ylantar shivered and fell lax and slack suddenly, hands falling to his sides, open and palms up.

When he was completely spent, she finished swallowing up the last few droplets of cum and popped off his cock. "You certainly managed to show your desire to the utmost," she said, staring down at the hard cock that now simply bobbed in the air, pointed at her face half the time, the other half at her chest.

She admired it for a long few seconds, then reached for the base of Ylantar's shirt. I felt the stick of sweat as it was peeled away, as it tried to cling to his body; when his bare chest was revealed, she leered down at it with naked lust, her breath shallow as she shifted removed her own bottoms, soon straddling Ylantar with her naked body. "Do not agonize; I have consumed sweet silphium, gift of the goddess to we dark elves," she reassured him, fingers softly running across his chest. "There is no need to fear that you shall make a mother of me. It would ruin my life far more than yours, were that to happen."

She slid down upon him, then, letting out a soft sigh as his length entirely disappeared inside her pink folds. Her breath through her nostrils was heavy, her head shaking from side to side as she took him to the base. There was the faintest hint of a groan, her full breasts seeming to press outwards, and his hands reached up for them, softly pawing at them, noticing where they had become wet from his spit, sticky from her sweat. She shivered gently as he caressed them - he had learned a bit from Vicolene's body, but there was a difference between the two's breasts, not only in size but in the particular spots of sensitivity.

She began to bounce, her whole body rising and falling, her breasts moving with it. His fingers squeezed into her tits. "You're so sexy," he breathed out. "I've been fantasizing about you for weeks," he told her, making her smile.

"You have, hmm? I thought I caught the twinkle of desire in your eye; I am glad to know I have not merely gone mad." She started to lean forward, pressing her breasts against his palms in the process - the crushing movement appeared to be the most delightful to her, judging by the way she sputtered and groaned atop him, her sex clamping down briefly on his cock. Her eyelashes fluttered, her whole body twisting atop him. "Come now. Come within me at your whim," she said, her voice milky and vibrating as she twitched atop him. "Nnn, I'm, quite satisfied, oh, yes," she ground out before coming atop him, her cunt squeezing down like a vice on his length.

It was intense, the sensation of that orgasm - the way her cunt groped and squeezed hard on his dick. It was almost malicious, in the way her inner muscles coiled and squeezed around his cock, but the pleasure was so incredible I almost wanted to let Ylantar come. I did not, however. Again, to make her work for it, would make her appreciate it all the more when it did come, would make her think of herself as a capable lover for bringing him off, rather than him as an incompetent one for coming so quick.

When her orgasm finished, there was a sagging of both their bodies. Qilanna's as she trembled, fingers pressed down against Ylantar's bare chest, pushing against his pectorals; Ylantar as he shuddered and panted at his own near miss, his body having bucked wildly and instinctively but now calming down with that panting enervation that came after such brief bouts of wild-eyed desire.

She began to ride him again not even a minute later, panting and breathing through her nose heavily as she rode him. "I am your teacher, and now your lover too. I'll teach you all the ways of love, my dear Ylantar, so simply let go. Let yourself enjoy it. Let that impassioned seed slip free from inside you and greet me; there is nothing to fear." He grunted, fingers practically mauling her tits as his hips started to slam up against her, but it wasn't his own self-control that was keeping him from coming - it was my control of such things.

"I need, to come," he whispered, "why can't I come."

She let out the softest noise of sympathy, fingers reaching down to gently caress his cheek, trailing along his features with loving care as she slowed down. "The toiling laborer knows that haste makes waste," she told him, beginning to move more slowly, her pace measured and careful. Each inch was swallowed up in her wet sex, and then all but the very tip was let out, as though she was kissing his cock with her pussy. Then she would slither back down. "You will find your pleasure in time. Until then, simply lie back and enjoy it. Forget chasing your pleasure, and relax. Trust me."

She certainly wasn't forgetting about chasing his pleasure herself. He was out of his wits from the sensations he'd been battered around by; I, on the other hand, was fully capable of noticing the way that Qilanna rolled her hips round on his cock. The way she would occasionally squeeze it. The way she would press down against him, grinding his dick against her inner walls this direction and that. At some point, she leaned forward, her breasts pressing against his bare chest, her lips finding his shoulder, softly kissing and licking the skin there, making her way up to his neck, licking his lips, nibbling his earlobe, breathing directly against his face as she leered down over him.

I made her work for it. She did. She spent an hour working away, increasingly exhausted, increasingly tired. Her own orgasms came and went, one after the other, minutes stretching out into an unbearable infinity for her. Her skin shone with sweat; her eyes glistened with tears; and her pupils were wild with lust. When I did let him go off inside her, it provoked such a wild moan from her, her thighs trembling softly as she twitched beneath him, yet it was as much from relief as from pleasure. Her head lolled forward, and at last, she removed herself from him.

"That was... incredible..." he breathed.

"I will learn to bring you off more swiftly, Ylantar," she said, as she collected a towel, wetting it and patting away her sweat before getting herself dressed. "That was... quite enervating. I am afraid we cannot train further; when next we fight, spellweaving shall not be permitted."

"Yes, ma'am," he panted from where he lay. She smiled gently, leaned over him, and kissed his forehead.


	4. Chapter 4

For a time, Ylantar trained with Qilanna, and engaged in sex in seclusion with her. It wasn't necessary to make it a constant element of their relationship, so I allowed it to ebb and flow according to their particular feelings for one another. They never bloomed into some romantic love, but they intensified the affection between the duo, that they had shared not only long hours training, but also spent time lovemaking, or speaking in postcoital bliss of things important to either of them.

"I know not if I will ever be a married woman," Qilanna said, with a long exhalation as she stared up at the ceiling. The pair were not naked - they got dressed soon after their every sexual encounter, lest they be caught unawares - but they were soaked with sweat, and the faint taint of other juices. "It is something I grow less certain of every day."

"I hope it is not my influence," Ylantar said, his voice wavering with exertion. "You deserve to be happy."

"It is your influence, but it is not as though my heart has been spirited away by you. Perhaps I will simply have a procession of younger lovers until I am too worn out to even bear a child?"

"That does not sound good to me," Ylantar said. "It is the duty of a woman to bear children for her house."

"I am a commoner," Qilanna said, a lazy smile on her lips as she glanced over at Ylantar. "If my line dies with me, so be it."

"If this is an attempt to trick me into courtship..." Ylantar began, not truly knowing where to follow through with it. The idea was unpleasant to him, given their relationship had largely been working well, but certainly within the realm of possibility.

Qilanna simply let out a snort. "It is no such thing. You think too much of yourself. Besides, were I to befuddle and seduce you, I would honey you with sweet words before I pleaded with you to find some way to make me your mistress."

"Then why have you given up on child bearing? Is it not the holy task to which women are called, and before which men must tremble? In war, every man avoids pain for himself and inflicts it upon others, but women willingly take pain unto themselves to ensure that our society survives."

"Yet there are men who go not to war, for one reason or another. Perhaps I am better where I am. I could hardly keep teaching sword techniques with a pregnant belly."

"As skilled as you are with a sword, your children would surely benefit the city of Telane with their skill." Qilanna let out another small snort at that, her thoughts clearly lazy and ill-considered.

"That is surely a true thing. My legacy of swordplay, passed on through the ages... and you? You plan to do your duty for Telane, when the time comes?"

"Of course," Ylantar agreed readily. "For Telane, and for Jehalaora."

"And this?"

"It does not impede my duty one bit. One might even argue it improves it," he explained, making her laugh, her whole body heaving from the movement.

"Mm, perhaps, perhaps. Be sure that you do not improve yourself too much, or with too many girls, lest your wife discover some unfortunate thing has grown between your thighs beyond the one we know well." She absently pat his length in his pants, making it gently twitch.

They were, soon enough, making love again. Qilanna had made good on her promise to teach him lovemaking, and he was becoming ever more adroit at it with each passing day.

* * *

I was also seeping deeper into Ylantar's essence. I was by no means in control of his body, but I had a greater and greater feel for his moods, his thoughts, as if they were trickling from one of us over to the other. I could sense his mild anxiety regarding his upcoming marriage meeting, something he did not let show on his face or in his actions, or even his occasional speaking to himself in his room.

He was to meet Ardulvrae va Aleduis soon enough; she was almost a decade his junior, a girl just six years old to his fourteen. There was little he knew about her, in behavior or in constitution. Her mother was not the lady of her house, but a younger sister of the lady, Belarzina, and Belarzina was not too well spoken of in the community. She was said to be meek. The dark elves did not despise a gentle temperament in itself, but for them, the ideal woman was like a wildflower: beautiful, yes, but also wild, capable of self-sufficiency and of a firm, disciplined temperament. Belarzina was a woman cowed into submission to her elder sister, not willingly and loyally following her, and it was some mild stain upon the good name of the girl he was to be wed to, that she came from such stock.

Since the Aleduis was a much more prestigious family - counted among the greatest five or six, where the Jehalaora were among the top two hundred or so - it was something that was necessary for the courtship to even be considered. But custom demanded that the marriage involve a meeting or two of husband and wife, so that they knew they would not despise one another. Since dark elven boys of the nobility would serve ten years in the army, that often meant meeting long, long before the girl had grown into her fullness as a woman, and by extension, long before there was any idea of what her adult personality would be like.

The meeting was hosted at the Jehalaora estate, with the matriarch going to great expense to impress the Aleduis family of her own family's wealth and prestige. It was an investment, in a sense - if Ardulvrae did marry Ylantar, then they would pay a dowry to the Jehalaora, which would doubtless be far greater than the peccaries slaughtered for the meal.

There were a great deal of niceties, of introductions, before the whole mass of higher-ranked family members (notably, Belarzina was present, but the Aleduis matriarch was not - it was not quite a calculated slight, but it certainly suggested they understood the potential match as being one to a family below them) arranged themselves around the table.

Thus far, I had been made to endure the occasional prayer to the Huntress, the goddess who had slain me. It was to my great fortune on that front that I had possessed a male host, for it seemed that only women were able to commune with her. It was a strange quality from after my time, for I'm sure in my day, she had her male priests as well as female ones. The consequence of this apparent impurity of men was that when some ritual slaughter and consecration had to be done, the men were excluded from it, given to understand only at a distance removed what had happened. The goddess had been pleased or displeased, as read into entrails or by ecstatic communion, but this was relayed by distant proxy: first from the goddess to her chosen vessel, then that vessel to the women gathered, then to me. They kept only a few holy days to her, and none involved the menfolk greatly. The closest was a kind of great wooing, where young women and men went about freely on the streets and displayed love and lust to one another without concern, confessions of feelings made, impassioned embraces held, but that was not something the nobility participated in.

Thus, this was the first time I had to listen to a priestess offer gracious words to that foul and wicked thing, now deformed by her once-allies, that is the Huntress. "Great Naryeda," she began to intone, her back held straight but her head dipping the moment she came into a position in the center of the room. Her hair was long enough to reach the floor, the ivory white and steel-straight strands stretching down to pool around her feet, as well as obscuring her features. "We come to offer unto you another marriage among your people; if it pleases you, then make it good. If it displeases you, give us a sign so we may know that we ought do better for your sake. We wish only to wed like to like, the good to the good. Be it that one or the other are of poor virtue, make it known to us."

A silence stretched out for what felt to me an uncomfortably long time. I must admit some concern that perhaps this grand game was going to be brought to an end, and I would have to wait tens of thousands of years for a second chance. After all, Naryeda surely did not want _me_ of all people involving myself among her people.

Perhaps she gave them too much latitude and cared not. Perhaps my presence was successfully disguised, deeply as ingrained as I was. Whatever it was, the silence ended in its time, as the woman raised her head. "Great Naryeda, may you reveal to these two their souls to one another, so if either cannot live with the other, if the one who wanders is wed to the one who sets firm roots, then they shall know now. In sacrifice, we offer Your holy beast, a cat."

A basket containing what looked to be an albino kitten was brought before the priestess, who promptly ritually slaughtered it in full view of the whole gathered party. To me, it was a rather disgusting sight - the meat was simply stretched out across the ground rather than eaten - but to the party, it was a quiet but meaningful display of wealth on the part of the Jehalaora family. Most such sacrifices, I knew, were conducted with spiders, not with cats. If they had paid for a _cat_ , a rare beast in Telane, it meant they wished very dearly to have the marriage succeed. There was, I believe, some surprise in Belarzina's eyes as she saw the creature slowly strewn out before her. Somehow I suspected she had never seen a cat slaughtered in a sacrifice in anything like her honor.

In any case, with the cat very definitively dead, the next part of the marriage ceremony was to take place. Ylantar and Ardulvrae would go into a separate room, where there were only the two of them, after swearing a sacred oath to Naryedo to neither break chastity while inside, nor discretion while out. Whatever they said to one another would be said only to the other. At least, ideally - only a fool would say just _anything_ during such a meeting. Even if breaking such an oath carried dire consequences both social and spiritual, one could allude, make decisions based upon it, and perhaps even whisper words in the ears of a priestess who could then present them as divine revelation.

Ardulvrae herself was a girl of six, and did not come up to even four feet. She was genuinely dwarfed by Ylantar, who had long since hit his growth spurt, and I suspected she could not even reach his ribcage. Her skin was that deathly pale that verged on the translucent, blood visible beneath it. The absence of color and pigment gave her a lightly bug-eyed mien, her only point of color being a pair of vivid green eyes. Her white hair was cut to a modest length, scarcely draping over the shoulders, and done in elaborate ringlets, the fine red dress afforded to her working a silent statement on the wealth of her family - unlike an adult, she would outgrow such clothes in a year or two at best.

The local custom was that the man would speak first, so he did so. "I am honored to make your acquaintance, Ardulvrae," he said, with a small dip of his head. "Shall we sit?"

She just nodded, getting in a seat. There was a small table with some laid out food upon it, purely symbolic rather than anything deeper: bread and water. She sat there, legs silently kicking beneath her as she stared up at him, her eyes seeming particularly bulbous in the moment as she did so.

There was still nothing but silence that stretched out after a few seconds. "I am Ylantar." More silence. I could feel the rumble of annoyance in him, as she remained so silent, and the quiet cogitation as he tried to arrive upon something to say that would impress upon her the need to speak without being offensive enough to cause problems down the line. "That is a very lovely dress. Did your mother make it?" Ardulvrae glanced down at it, then nodded. Sewing was a common custom among drow women, even in the upper classes. "Are you learning to sew yet?" Ardulvrae nodded again. "Do you have any pieces you've finished?" She flushed at that, white skin turning vivid pink as blood flowed to her features, then she shook her head.

Another silence stretched out. It was discomforting, an elongated thing that stretched out an agonizing distance as she continued to say nothing. There was another flash of irritation from Ylantar, but he held it back. "Can you speak?" She nodded, then grimaced, her expression instantly turning from happy to talk to an older boy who was trying his hardest, to embarrassed at her own failures.

"Sorry," she said, in a hoarse, quiet whisper that tingled just on the edge of audibility. Her green eyes slid down towards the table.

"It's alright. Are you frightened of me?" She shook her head quickly. "Then why are you being so quiet?"

Her eyes remained on the table as she silently took in that particular question. "...talking... I'm not good at..." she eventually managed to muddle out.

"If we are to be husband and wife, then we should be able to talk to each other, yes?"

She just fidgeted in silence. I could feel the increasing irritation that Ylantar felt as he sat there, waiting for the girl to say anything at all in response to that question - he let the silence intentionally stretch out, to try to provoke some response from her, but none was forthcoming.

"Do you dislike me?" She shook her head rapidly from side to side, her eyes snapping back up to him. "Do you... not want to marry me?" She shook her head again, giving him a nervous smile. Her pink tongue flashed out for just a moment past her lips and she swallowed wetly.

"It's just... how I am..." she said, dipping her head low again after a few seconds in a miserable show of shyness, though her eyes kept looking up at him.

"I see." I also saw, even better than Ylantar did. Where he was annoyed that the match his mother had made for him was perhaps the very definition of a mute wallflower, I saw opportunity: _If she's this quiet when we get married, I'll have more freedom to act when we get married._ He paused as that thought crossed into his mind, looking down at Ardulvrae with renewed eyes and interest.

She recognized that interest, the way his gaze fell on her rather more intensely and with a certain appraising interest. She may have been very young, and clearly very shy, but she was not stupid: she could tell that he was now sizing her up as a potential partner rather than trying to think of how best to wriggle his way out of a marriage.

"What sorts of things do you enjoy doing?"

"Sewing," she said. He waited a few seconds, making her eventually continue onward, though only with some clear recalcitrance, not particularly happy that these words were being dragged out of her. "Watching people... listening to stories..."

It was some bursting of some small dam, at least; their conversation as time wore on was actually a two way thing, with Ardulvrae offering the occasional - if small - verbal response. She asked no questions of her own, but Ylantar volunteered personal information. "You are quite cute," he said, at one point, more to test her response than anything else, and her cheeks lit up with a pink coloration. He smiled gently at her, and returned to various inquiries about her family life.

By the time that Ylantar finally left, he was feeling quite a bit more confident and happy about the potential marriage, on the simple yet intuitive grounds that he could tolerate her. He didn't admire her, barely found her cute - but she wasn't _annoying_ any longer, and for an arranged marriage which would wed his house into another, more powerful and wealthy one, that was enough.

Ardulvrae disappeared under her mother's proverbial skirt soon enough, sitting down next to the woman as she spoke with the Jehalaora matriarch. Ardulvrae would even, on rare occasion, glance his way and give some small wave to him, but that was the last of their interactions - and if, as was quite likely, they did not see one another again before he entered the army? Then that would be their last interaction for a decade.

* * *

Only a few scant _days_ after the marriage meeting was done, Kyorlan burst into a training session between Ylantar and Wehlor. Kyorlan was the eldest son of Aunrae, and Ylantar's cousin; their dynamic was not one of regular interaction, so I hardly knew the boy. "So it is true," he said, as he saw Ylantar quietly dismiss a spell, his glare sharp. "You have been seeking patronage in spellweaving from someone other than my mother. You dare insult her like this?"

There was no audience, but Kyorlan was practically trembling in rage. He was a year Ylantar's senior, and cut a sharp and imposing figure, being (as he was) nearly ready to be shipped off to the army.

"He is Vicolene's tutor."

"Vicolene has gone off to war!" Kyorlan shouted at the (admittedly paper thin) excuse.

"No slight was intended. I simply wished to practice the basics, so as not to waste your mother's time," Ylantar smoothly lied. Wehlor, wisely, chose to leave himself out of the fight between noble boys.

This sort of anger would generally have been seen as intemperate behavior on the part of a man, but in this particular circumstance, it was wholly justified. Becoming enraged for the sake of kin was far more seemly than languishing in half-measures and quiescence. "I dare not believe such lies. You are here because you believe my mother an incompetent crone with nothing to teach you, ungrateful little boy." Kyorlan's voice was terse, his eyes narrowed.

Neither Ylantar nor myself were truly deceived. Was Kyorlan angry? Very likely, yes. Was it a mere coincidence that this anger had happened to be expressed a scant few days after a good marriage meeting, which presumably was laying the groundwork for a marriage years down the line that, if Ylantar was for some reason to be removed from the equation, Kyorlan would be the next logical choice? No, obviously not.

"I cannot change your heart of my own accord, merely plead my honesty."

"If you wish to plead your honesty so dearly, then I challenge you to the hunter's duel." As Nyareda's title as the Huntress implies, hunting has a certain sacred value to the dark elves, and their proper, ritual duels, used in adjudication of the gods, are not a matter of two people standing against one another, but of a kind of counting coup. The two duelists take their problem before the matriarch, and each is given a ribbon. The one who takes the other's ribbon is the victor, ordained by the Huntress; if neither take the other's ribbon, it is a sign of the goddess that they should let whatever quarrel they came to lie. Violence occurs on occasion in such duels, but it is rare, and rather oblique.

"I do not believe my mother will allow you such a duel, since it was her discretion that arranged Wehlor's tutelage in the first place for Vicolene and then, when I found him good supplement to your mother's teaching, allowed me to persist in receiving his lessons."

"That merely speaks to the fact that your mother is also joined in such insults to my mother," Kyorlan countered with an indelicate ease of someone who is spoiling for a fight.

* * *

The mediation was a private family affair. To the outside world, the family must continue to present a united front. Kyorlan was not chastised for the fact that Wehlor had seen the entire ordeal, but only because he supposedly had just "discovered" it. Kyorlan was joined by his mother; Ylantar had no advocate, but his own mother was the judge.

"I did indeed allow Ylantar to sit in on lessons with Vicolene, and it is also true that I persisted in allowing Wehlor to continue tutoring him. I did so believing that it provided him an opportunity to practice when you, dear sister, would rather be doing other things."

Aunrae glanced towards Ylantar with venom in her eyes. Kyorlan simply stood up straighter and spoke. "Yet he made no mention of this fact to my mother of his own accord." Now that he was no longer ignited with the fury of a man whose family has been insulted, he could continue onward. "If it was not a slight, why keep it a secret?"

"Perhaps he simply forgot. He has been working very hard in both sword and sorcery, as he takes second lessons with Qilanna."

"He has been studying with Wehlor since Vicolene left, which is months ago, now," Kyorlan continued. "Even if he were to forget that he had not told my mother, then surely, surely, he would at least let slip the events of a training match by mere incident? Some move he had tried and found wanting in practice, or something he had seen and wanted to learn better. Yet no mention was ever made of it to her."

"I have focused on what Aunrae taught me; I did not wish to concern her with other things, as she is wiser than me and knows more of what sorts of things I should learn than myself."

The quiet bickering went on. Kyorlan construed the entire matter as a calculated slight by Ylantar, and he had a fair enough basis for it. The actual reason, of course, was that Aunrae was an incompetent teacher actively stifling Ylantar's development. But that was a matter utterly impossible to prove, unless... _If I ask to sit in on Aunrae's lessons to Kyorlan, I can at least see how she teaches when it is properly done._

"I think I may have a solution that doesn't require Nyareda to sit in judgment of our youthful follies," Ylantar said. "If I were to observe Kyorlan's lessons with his mother, I could then build on that in my own lessons with Aunrae, taking no more of her time but allowing me to receive the greater part of her teaching." The fact that that therefore included what was intended for her own child, went unsaid.

"As if I could focus on my lessons with you present," Kyorlan practically sneered, and his mother agreed, gently placing one hand upon his shoulder.

After a while more of arguing, the matriarch spoke. "Very well. Both boys will receive a ribbon tomorrow. The gods will judge as they will judge."

"I believe," Kyorlan said, reaching for the obvious purpose of this entire ploy, "it would be inappropriate for the Aleduis family to be asked to marry such a deceptive child as Nyareda no doubt will judge him to be."

His mother's lines thinned. "Very well. I will arrange the marriage to Ardulvrae to be to you, instead, if you should win; but if you lose, then you will be joining the army the next day. Are these terms acceptable to all parties?" By the look she gave Ylantar, that was not a question meant for him, but to Aunrae and to Kyorlan.

"They are," Aunrae agreed, and that was that.


	5. Chapter 5

The prelude of the hunter's duel was officiated by the matriarch, who here took up the role of a sacred priestess, endowed by their goddess with certain blessings and so on and so forth. I didn't much care for the woman in question - the mother or the goddess - so I was hardly paying that much attention as the twin ribbons were handed down to the pair. Each had a fairly unique, complex design - not the sort of thing you could duplicate easily. My awareness was more focused on carefully thinking over ideas of what could be done to raise Ylantar's odds of success.

The hunter's duel wasn't conducted the moment that all parties had agreed, but it was less than a day afterwards, the arrangements having been made quite briskly. It was not some widely publicized affair, for the simple reason that the more publicized it was, the more certain it was that servants and the like would listen in and watch the competitors and start piecing together things about where the ribbon was being hidden, which one or the other competitor could use if they so wished. My impression was that this sort of relatively "private" hunter's duel was something that was done when the matriarch didn't particularly want one side or the other to win, or else thought that her preferred victor had no chance. It was by no means a perfect measure, but it did ameliorate the risks to a degree.

The best way for Ylantar to win would be if he could somehow mark the ribbon in question, but the ceremony left him with no opportunity to mark it in any way, as the two boys were quite cleanly divided. Qilanna wound up playing the ceremonial role that would have been played by his mother, if she wasn't officiating the entire affair. Could her knowledge somehow be put to use? My mind then began to turn to the question of Ylantar's own ribbon. I had left the question of what to do with it up to him, nudging him that he only needed to ensure that Kyorlan didn't win - he didn't need to win himself. The boy was bright, but I did worry if he would actually manage to keep the ribbon secreted away.

The ceremony, with all its pomp, ended, and I was ultimately no closer to an answer than I had been. I tried to spit a splotch of inky darkness at Kyorlan's ribbon as a last ditch effort, but it was noticed and effortlessly dispelled by Aunrae.

It didn't garner any actual commentary from her, though. She merely gave Ylantar a withering look, grabbed her son's hand, and walked off.

Ylantar himself soon took off, bringing Qilanna along with him to reduce the likelihood of a sudden, violent attack of some kind. It was rare, but mostly because the hunter's duel was intended to reduce bloodshed, so there was an aura of mutual compliance with that premise as the will of the Huntress. But, such an aura can only last until such time as someone stops complying.

* * *

Ylantar's plan for the ribbon had already begun the day before, something that I had even seen in action, though his actions now took place in near-perfect silence and made me wonder if he was actually planning what I had initially thought he was planning. He was wearing the boots he had prepared, a rough pair of combat boots in which he had cut an extremely thin hole near the base. Instead of going to the privacy of his room, he was making his way with Qilanna through a somewhat circuitous route, stopping in several different locations on the Jehalaora estates, Qilanna trusting his decisions even as they stopped in a shed to collect some shovels.

"We should wait here for a while," he said, the ribbon currently unceremoniously tucked in the inside of his boot, still very tangible as its tangled mass there pressed against bare flesh. "To make it look like we're hiding it here."

"Mmm. I can think of something we can do while we wait," Qilanna said, but it was playful flirtation, not sincerity - a quickie would be highly ill-advised, given that it was possible that Aunrae or Kyorlan or an agent of theirs might be monitoring the two of them. Still, she reached for his body, stroking gingerly at his chest with the sort of plaintive touch of a woman possessed of very basic, carnal desires, and not much else.

"I would love to, but some other time," he informed her. She continued to touch and rub at his abs, fingers absently groping and squeezing his increasingly muscular and toned form, her lips curled in a half-smile, her eyebrow raised. He let out a long-suffering sigh. "Take a shovel and go to the northeast corner of the estates where nothing grows, I'll be with you shortly," he said, pulling her hands away. She pouted faintly, but didn't object, collecting a shovel and heading that way.

For his part, Ylantar counted out ten breaths, fingers absently tapping out the number, then knelt down, pulling the ribbon out of the inside of his boot and placing it in the small hole he'd made in the sole. He grabbed a bottle of black tar from one of the shed's shelves and traced a bit along the hole in question, before carefully wiping it and putting it exactly back where it came from. Then, for effect, he disrupted the positions of several other objects to a greater or lesser degree, and only then emerged from the shed, shovel in hand.

The two began to upturn soil until they were ragged and tired, making hole after hole, some deeper than others, some wider than others, arranged in a random and nonsensical pattern. Qilanna worked patiently, diligently, alongside him, while he took care to make sure that his boots got quite dirty, occasionally stepping in mud, to better disguise the hole he had made in them.

The simple problem of the hunter's duel is that one simultaneously needs to hide the object, and yet also sleep. If it's hidden on your person, you have to hide it each night; if it's hidden in your room, it's available to be searched when you aren't there, and searching the opponent's room while they're out is basically the first move of any hunter's duel, to the point it's more perfunctory than anything else. It would be humiliating to fail to find the ribbon because one had not even bothered searching every last nook and cranny of the other's room. It was so self-evident and normal a move that it was considered gauche to even try to prevent it, and certainly wouldn't turn out to be effective.

By putting it in his boot, he ensured that he would take it with him whenever he left his room, and by taking this awkward route and moving around the way he had, he precipitously reduced the likelihood that anybody would wonder where exactly he had taken the ribbon. It was somewhere on his winding path that he had hidden it. There was even a decent chance Kyorlan was already beginning to check through that route, and that he would interrupt their digging.

In point of fact, he actually did. They had spent a good three hours digging holes and then filling them back in, and upturned so much earth it was genuinely exhausting. I could feel the ache in Ylantar's muscles as he turned to face Kyorlan, who was practically sneering as he watched. "Do you honestly think you can hide your ribbon under some upturned soil?"

"Nah," Ylantar replied. His exhaustion had robbed him of any niceties, so he kept speaking. "But, I do honestly think you'll have to dig up at least as much as I did, to know that I _didn't_." He stretched, cracked his shoulders, and smiled at Kyorlan. "Well, since you're here, I guess I'm done. I'm going to go back to my bedroom to take a nice, long sleep. Good luck finding my ribbon."

Kyorlan let out a huff and left the upturned area of soil behind, turning back around to start looking anywhere that didn't require hours of backbreaking labor to discern the location of.

Naturally, Ylantar made sure to wander around in various suspicious ways, stopping for a minute or two every time he got the chance, before - once exhaustion had pretty much entirely overtaken him - going back to his bedroom and simply falling asleep immediately. He even kept his boots on as he slept, arms crossed atop him. I had to admire the idea: by sleeping that way, it would be impossible for anybody to check his boots if indeed they thought to, and by waiting until he was so exhausted that he just flopped unconscious onto the bed, one could believe that it was mere coincidence.

* * *

Ylantar did not seem overly concerned about finding Kyorlan's ribbon, though Kyorlan himself was becoming increasingly desperate to find Ylantar's. It made sense to me: Ylantar had no real reason to want to see Kyorlan shipped off, other than the convenience, and the _inconvenience_ of ticking Aunrae off made it not worth it. He seemed happy to simply casually go about his day. When Kyorlan would approach him, he simply demurred and avoided violence - given that any anger on Kyorlan's fault would be due to anger (rather than having to do it to get at the ribbon) it wasn't too surprising.

Despite that, Ylantar did meander. At first, I thought it was merely a consequence of his strategy - wander around to create suspicion, make it harder for Kyorlan to locate where you hid the item because he's looking through all the places he's already looked, on the chance it may have been moved there since he started looking. Then I noticed the way his gaze wandered, picking up things here and there, watching closely, listening to the serving staff. Despite the relative quiet with which the sacred hunt began, it was impossible to keep it a secret for too long, after all. One woman, in a moment of loose lips, mentioned that Aunrae seemed quite confident that her son was the one who would ultimately win the contest - that she seemed to have no concern whatsoever that Ylantar would win instead.

Ylantar returned to his room, idly humming. He tapped his thigh. Normally, he spoke when he was alone and thinking, but given the circumstances, he understandably did not, leaving me to wonder at precisely what he was thinking.

At last, he left, going to the baths. The estate had mixed baths that were meant for men and women to use - the dark elves were not so prudish as to care about showing off their naked bodies. One might be inclined to note they were not, in fact, truly naked - at least, not the ones who had been dipped in that baptismal rite of theirs. Those individuals were coated in my ichor every day for the rest of their lives. But, I know the dark elves did not see it that way.

He took up a position as a sentry, monitoring who entered and left with care. He didn't enter himself, just silently watching the movements, as if mentally calculating. The process lasted hours of dull drudgery and boredom. Kyorlan came there, looking sweaty and lightly mud-caked, and seemed completely at ease as he crashed into the water with a heavy splash. As if there was no risk whatsoever that Ylantar would find his ribbon while he was indisposed, or rifle through his things.

Two days more of watching the baths, Ylantar made his move, having performed some mental calculations I was not privy to. Not everyone visited the baths, of course - it was possible to simply use some water and a moist towel to brush across bare skin, which was how Ylantar was maintaining himself since he had hidden the item in his boot. The chance of his clothing being stolen while he was away was much too high a risk, after all. Even if they didn't know that it was in this or that clothing item, taking them was no real crime, and if he could not produce the ribbon, it didn't matter if they didn't know which particular thing they'd stolen contained it.

Perhaps Aunrae and Kyorlan had noticed as much, but given that Kyorlan had used the bath again, having apparently gone out to dig up the place he had to worry the ribbon was taken, he had not fit the particular pieces together.

He arrived at the suite his aunt stayed in, and simply entered without much care, a wooden training sword at his side. She rose from where she had been writing a letter, clearly quite enraged. "You shouldn't enter a woman's room alone," she told him, her voice sharp. "Begone, boy."

"I'm afraid I can't. I couldn't help but notice that you haven't been going to the baths."

"You want to look at your own aunt naked so badly? During this, a sacred hunt?" She scoffed, but I did detect the faintest trail of tension to her movements as she tried to pretend his presence - and given reason - didn't matter to her. She did have a lovely, curvy, tall body - large breasts, full, round buttocks, a height that was just an inch shorter than Ylantar's zooming upwards physique - but that was not why Ylantar was here.

"I do." He cracked his neck from one side to the other, putting his hand on his sword. "You can simply remove your clothes and I can check to put my concerns to rest. If not, I'll have to do it by force, or involve my mother."

"Involve your mother?"

"I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about why I am stripping you, after-" was as far as he got before she attempted to blind him with an overwhelming burst of light. If it hadn't been for my brisk and instinctive response, shading that light and swallowing it up, he likely would have been sent careening to the ground. Instead, he rushed her, tackling her to the bed, grasping her by the wrists and holding them tight as he stared down at her. Her hands tried to work the air, but I helped him, darkness coiling around fingers and palms, smothering any light she could possibly have made in the cradle, congealing around any darkness when she tried that instead. "So you are hiding it," he said.

He used his weight and a single hand to pin both arms above her head, then began to slide his fingers along her bare skin. What was exposed in her elegant dress was clearly not carrying it - and what wasn't, tended towards the unmentionables. He valiantly began with the regions least sensual: the upper arms, the calves and ankles and feet, and only then the stomach and neck, and from there... the thighs were first, and that was where he found it, tugging it out unceremoniously.

The whole time she had been fighting, of course. I had to use my darkness to smother her voice, planting it in her mouth and letting the black sticky darkness swallow up any sound, so even her screams scarcely carried to her captor's ears. He dangled the ribbon in front of her face, and her expression fell in defeat. "I don't think Kyorlan is ready to go into the army," she told him, as I loosened the darkness wrapped inside her mouth - at this point, screaming rape would only hurt her, since everyone would know exactly what had happened. Including the rather humiliating note that she was bested by a fourteen year old boy. "He needs months more of training to be safe."

"Then you shouldn't have agreed to this bet," he told her, his voice sharp. "The goddess has seen that you weren't teaching me properly, and arranged for you to lose; or, for Kyorlan to lose, for defending your unjust cause."

Aunrae bit her lip at that, some genuine guilt appearing on her features far more sharply now. She appeared to genuinely take this whole affair as an act of divine chastisement for her bad behavior, as absurd as it seemed to me. I was rather sure that if Nyareda had been paying any attention to us, it would have been me losing, since she had killed me all those millennia ago. I suppose it's possible that she'd forgotten her grudge, but I certainly hadn't forgotten mine. "I... apologize," she said, her voice soft. "Please, don't punish my son - he only did what he thought was right."

"It isn't me who would be punishing your son," Ylantar chided. "But, I think I can see a way the two of us can make things up between us. You tell him to yield, naturally - it'd be more honorable than losing outright, after all, and I would accept the concession. It would basically just save us all some time." Aunrae nodded quietly, seeming enthused.

It is worth noting here that Ylantar's penis had become tumescent during the time he had been checking his aunt for any sign of Kyorlan's ribbon. I had assumed it was merely a matter of physical arousal born of the anxious circumstances in which he found himself - I had certainly grown used to the thing rising and falling according to whatever vague whims his body's hormones had at that particular moment.

"There is one other thing I want out of you," he said, and his hand slid along her body, then, up her dress, towards her breast, which he promptly groped through the thin fabric. She let out a soft note of surprise, eyes widening at his touch as his fingers sank into the soft flesh, making her dark skin balloon around his hand. "Sex. It won't just be today, either."

"You..." She let out a scoffing noise. "What? You think I'm that beautiful?"

"No, I just want to come more." I did idly worry that perhaps I had done something a little overactive to his body at some point that needed to be compensated for, but I could try to work that out later.

"You... you just want... to come more?" She asked, sounding the words out in the lethargic way one does when they make no sense. "Oh. Vicolene is no longer satisfying those needs." She let out a snort. "I guess an idiot pervert like you would be inclined to such a thing."

"Are you taking silphium?" He asked, and Aunrae simply nodded. "It sounds like you're the real pervert, then, not me."

"My husband is dead and your mother hasn't arranged another for me yet. What do you expect to happen, really?" She asked, with a meaningful tilt of her head.

It is difficult to quite describe the sensation of his penis at that point, the way it surged and ground against its confinement. He took the ribbon in his teeth, pulled down her panties, holding her in place all the while. She just watched it all with droll boredom, as if the entire situation was quite absurd to her. His fingers sank into her sex, the only visible part of her that hadn't been dyed in my black or still carried the ivory white of the dark elves' natural albinism besides the eyes. A sharp pink contrast to the surrounding flesh.

He took out his length, pausing as he stroked it, pressing the tip against her pink sex. "Thank me for letting you fuck me," he told her. His voice wasn't harsh or cruel - it was simply attempting to extract something arousing from the other party for his own satisfaction. "After all, if I didn't have any interest in your body, then your son would be being shipped off to war right now."

She rolled her eyes, but spoke the words: "Thank you for letting me fu-huck!" She gasped as he simply buried himself to the base inside her in a single forceful stroke, one hand still keeping her arms pinned, the other going to her breast, all but mauling the soft flesh. He seemed absolutely fascinated with it, no doubt contrasting its soft, plush nature, the way it contorted and reshaped itself around his fingers with each progressive grope. She ground her teeth at the sensation, but she didn't resist him - I made sure she wasn't going to wind up making too much voice with another ejection of my own inky black into her mouth.

"I'm going to fuck you for a long, _long_ time," he told her, his voice sounding a bit rough as he said it. He was, after all, still just a boy despite the fact that he'd grown so much in the year that I had been inside him. He was affecting a confidence that was less than certain. Still, I made sure to give his words their appropriate weight, quietly toying with all the necessary systems to make sure that he wouldn't be coming for quite a while. "I'm going to fuck you until you love it."

"Good luck," was Aunrae's only reply. She made it clear with her expression that she found the odds of him defeating her in that manner dismal - but she also found the odds of losing in a magical fight to such a young boy dismal, and she had lost that one too.

It was at that point that Ylantar let go of her hands. They just disentangled themselves from over her head, instead idly lying on either side of her as she tried to do her best impression of a dead fish. Ylantar was, however, no virgin - he had learned all sorts of things with Vicolene, and refined out what generally worked versus what was her specifically with Qilanna. He peeled up her dress, revealing more of her obsidian black skin, revealing her white bush, and soon enough, her hard nipples too, as he peeled it up and past her head. He drank in her naked body with obvious relish, his length throbbing inside her...

And, having the aunt who had been teaching him improperly, who had tried to steal away his marriage arrangement on loose and vague grounds, naked and willing before him, he began to do what he did best: fuck her brains out. He leaned over her, kissing at her neck first, then suckling at the bare flesh there, my dark skin meaning any bruises would be invisible no matter how much his teeth or suction went to work on her body like that.

Despite her feigned disinterest, she began to feel it, gently wiggling her hips beneath him in an idle movement side-to-side, something so small I'm not sure she even noticed it herself. As his lips trailed down to her breasts and he began to suckle on her nipples, to tease them with his thumb and forefinger, pinching and pulling and twisting to the tiniest degree, his other hand reached down for her sex, beginning to tease her lower lips up and down, his phalanges brushing against her clitoris with only the tenderest of caresses.

She groaned softly, a quiet noise that was mostly swallowed up by my magic, but I could feel the response from Ylantar, the way his lips immediately curled up in a wicked grin. He had been applying a tiny amount of pressure to her clit, subtly pushing it in - now he repeated the process again and again, as if he had found a button that, when pushed, provoked all the things he desperately wanted out of the woman. His pressing became more insistent, more regular, more forceful. Each time made her squirm that bit more visibly, made her let out a quiet little whimper-gasp of pleasure, her eye twitching faintly as she was subjected to the assault.

Part of her, no doubt, saw it as embarrassing to be being brought off so quickly by a boy so young - but increasingly it was being overwhelmed by the part of her that just wanted to come, to enjoy herself. So less than five minutes after inserting his length into her, without any foreplay whatsoever, she came. Her white teeth became visible as they dug into her lower lip, her whole body undulating beneath him as she struggled. Hands bunched up into fists and then vaguely pressed against the bed beneath her in this strange, erratic way that a woman who wants to do something but feels unable to do it might express that frustration.

For his part, when she came, Ylantar simply bottomed out inside her, closing his eyes and sighing softly as he felt her inner walls caress and grip his length. His toes curled, his hips bucked faintly - but he didn't come, of course. I didn't let him. If it had been him purely in control of his own body, he probably would have. Instead, he could put everything into going at it again, taking advantage of Aunrae's weak points, relishing in her body as he pumped away. She increasingly lost control, lost the facade of dignity, started moaning hard. My darkness swallowed up the sounds she made, and soon enough, I wound up having to start doing much the same to their pelvis, the wet noises of collision otherwise seeming threateningly loud as he thrust inside her again and again.

Her orgasms became more and more rapid in sequence with one another, the longer the sex went on. First they were separated by four minutes or so; then by three; then, towards the end of things, as Ylantar's body began to sweat profusely from the sheer exertion of fucking a woman like a maniac for over an hour, his clothes tossed aside for the way they felt sweltering and tight, they were coming every two minutes, with her scarcely having the time to recover from one before the next hit.

It was at that point - Aunrae herself sticky with sweat, her mouth slightly ajar, a crooked smile on her lips as she stared dumbly up towards the ceiling, some drool having trailed down her cheek at some point - that I finally allowed Ylantar release. He groaned at the feeling, his hands clawing down on both of Aunrae's tits. Despite the fact that I well knew the action was unpleasant based on her previous reactions to similar, her only reaction was the tiniest shift of her hips. So tiny I doubted either of them actually recognized it was happening.

When he finished, Ylantar pulled out of her, sagging from the exertion, wiping at his hair with the back of his hand. "Here's your son's ribbon," he said at last. "Cancel the duel," he added, as he rose, getting dressed once more. He reached out with darkness beyond the portal to her room, then slipped out, abandoning the fucked senseless woman and going back to his bedroom.

Once there, he sat down on the edge of the bed, letting out a long groan of exertion, closing his eyes. There was still a smile on his lips, one of pride, glorying in his victory. For a man of his society, that was quite the odd perspective; male sexuality was vaguely shameful, but somehow or other he was clearly feeling exultant. I don't know whether to attribute it to my action, his own internal nature, or perhaps some combination thereof - perhaps my control of his orgasms and sexual sensations at such a key point in development led to him coming to see sexuality as a method of establishing power over women, rather than relieving basal needs. That would be my best guess, but mortals' minds are complicated, awkward things even when they aren't subject to external influences.

I didn't have much time to muse, anyway. "So. Who's here?" He asked, glancing around the room. "An invisible sorcerer, I doubt. You're in my head, aren't you?"


	6. Chapter 6

I do not truly feel emotions in the same way that mortals do, but there are analogies. In this case, I felt tense - Ylantar had managed to figure out my presence. It wasn't a bluff, I knew that much. I had actively applied the same essence that allowed him to use magic without any volition on his part. I had been more prioritizing his personal safety than my own continued anonymity. If someone had stumbled upon him fucking his aunt, or if he had lost his hunter's duel, it would have seriously and negatively impacted his position - and by extension, mine.

 _I am_ , I admitted to him. He paused, taking in a deep breath through his nose as he seemed to consider my presence. His eyes closed, and I was left blind for a long few seconds before they opened again.

"Who are you?" He asked. One finger tapped against his thigh, clearly somewhat impatient to get the answers he wanted.

I considered a deflection for the briefest of moments, but I doubted it would work in the long term. _I am Ephaliat_. He made a spiralling gesture with his hand, egging me to continue on. By his expression, I could guess that he had no idea who I was - at least, not by name. _I am the one whose body you were dipped into in your thirteenth year._

He paused at that, seeming to seriously consider what I'd just said. He was utterly silent besides - I'd grown accustomed to him speaking out loud to himself as he planned and plotted, as he worked out the various peculiar contours of dark elven society and who in particular was trying to ruin his life and why. He was the sort to carefully think through problems, and speaking seemed to help him do so, so it was unusual to see him struggling with some intellectual task in both privacy and silence. His finger tapped against his knee as his mouth moved one way, then the other. "What can you actually do?" He asked, at last.

 _I am responsible for your magical talents; and I can whisper thoughts such as these into your mind_. I decided to leave out my ability to manipulate his various biological systems to direct his behavior this way and that. His jaw set, and he leaned forward, steepling his fingers as he considered my words.

"What do you want?"

That... was a rather more difficult question to answer. After all, he was a fairly devout follower of Nyareda, the very same goddess who in a past age had cut me down and buried my body. For whatever reason, she nowadays had only female priestesses, but he certainly didn't consider this some dire hateful misandry that I could use as a wedge between him and her. _To live again, even if not in the same form I once did. To continue as things are, more or less. To keep you alive, by extension._

I certainly wanted him to achieve a socially dominant position, because it would make it easier for me to gather power and strength to influence the world, but it was better to leave it gentler. I wanted what was best for him, since we were in the same boat. I let him ponder my words in silence. "I see." He stretched his body in a manner that I'm sure would have excited any of the women he'd had sex with thus far, standing up and dusting himself off. "Let me think about this."

 _Very well._ I could wait. I had been waiting for a very long time, after all.

* * *

He didn't speak to me further on the subject, instead throwing himself back into training with Qilanna, and even with Aunrae and Wehlor. His aunt seemed modestly more capable of actually teaching him, perhaps due to her pride having been broken down by his defeating her in a fight. As a teacher, she was of only moderate use - Ylantar's talents had far surpassed hers in terms of raw strength due to my presence within him, so she could only work at the edges, helping him with fine detailed magical work, formulating spells that did things very _precisely_.

I started to think he had simply put my existence out of his mind, given the amount of time he spent focusing on training and developing his skills, and the utter absence of any further attempts at conversation. Perhaps he simply didn't feel that there was anything else to say. Perhaps he was gauging my intentions by using silence to do it.

After a practice session of swordplay with Qilanna, the pair settled down in the room, drinking water, their bodies slick with sweat. Ylantar's eyes were naturally drawn to, and wandered, the buxom and muscular Qilanna, but she gave only an exhausted look back, as if she had been so completely enervated, even sex no longer interested her. It was strange; sometimes she would be tired, of course, but she would express that more by being lazy in her lovemaking than in avoiding it altogether.

"Is something the matter, Qilanna?" Ylantar asked.

"Always, something is in trouble and strife," Qilanna deflected, then sighed. "Your aunt is attempting to insist I instill martial values in her son as well. To teach two such enthusiastic youths is perhaps beyond my abilities." There was a faint hint of something dark in Ylantar's expression, and I could feel the knot in his chest at her words. "I do not draw him into my bedroom, Ylantar," she said, waving her hand dismissively at the very idea. "I am no suicidal fool who bewitches noble boys. It was you who seduced me, recall."

"Right," Ylantar agreed, his shoulders seeming to lighten at that fact. "Does that mean you are too exhausted for us to make love?"

The way she looked at him - appraising, considering, weighing the benefits and detriments - made it clear enough that she was. If she were to be fully energized, she would not have hesitated even for a moment. "I confess I would not make a good bed partner, but if you wish relief, I can lie beneath you and let you do as you please."

He smiled at her, warm and friendly, shaking his head. "I can hardly consider it a pleasant sexual experience to make love to a woman too tired to do anything besides lie there. At least, not if I like the woman," he added, earning a faint laugh from Qilanna.

"You speak with real wisdom, for one so young. I too would much despise lovemaking while you lay beneath me, inert as a corpse save for the throbbing of your manhood." She turned her gaze to his groin, as if fantasizing about fucking him, but again concluded that she truly lacked the energy to do anything. "Perhaps tomorrow."

* * *

Naturally, it was not tomorrow. Or the day after. She had three training sessions now, sometimes even four, when Aunrae and Kyorlan could manage to twist her arm into it. She managed well enough at actually teaching Ylantar, but her energy at the end of each session was an absolute nadir. Sometimes she would simply collapse to the ground and lie there for the better part of an hour, idly discussing household gossip or swordplay as she recovered.

With his primary source of sexual relief no longer available to him, Ylantar began masturbating again. _Perhaps it would be better to avail yourself of Aunrae_ , I suggested to him, and he grunted at that, furiously thrusting his length between his fingers, as if to deny the claim altogether. "She is doing this on purpose," he hissed. "Trying to deny me Qilanna. She fantasizes about fucking her nephew."

I did not point out the hypocrisy of that statement, for the simple reason that I did not care.

"I know that you can control my orgasms," he said, his voice cold as ice. I did feel some sense of tension at having been seen through like that, but it was a minor thing."You're going to make it so I cannot come when I'm fucking Aunrae."

 _Very well_. He rose from where he had been seated on his bed, heading immediately for his aunt's quarters.

She gladly welcomed him in, smiling as she saw him. "Ylantar. You are looking well. I trust that you have been doing well in your 'training' with Qilanna?" The way she said the word training left no ambiguity - she knew that he and Qilanna were lovers.

"Are you that desperate for me, that you're sabotaging my relationship with my teacher?" Ylantar asked, his hand grasping her by the shoulder as he pressed her up against the wall. His gaze was hungry.

Her eyes smoldered with lust right back, as much overconfident as she was needy. "You really are just ruled by your need for sex," she said, in this haughty, self-confident tone of voice, licking her lips as her fingers trailed along his flank. "Such a promiscuous young man... don't worry, I can take care of you much better than Qilanna can."

"If you think you're so worthy of my time, then make me come with your mouth. If you can't do that, find some other tutor for Kyorlan."

She smirked at that. She obviously imagined herself far too skilled to fail such a simple task, but she would find it utterly impossible anyway. "My late husband was always very delighted to see me slink to my knees... men are so easy to control if you know how to use your mouth," she explained, in a placid, self-confident manner, slipping down to her knees in front of Ylantar as if she were entirely confident and cocksure about the situation.

She peeled down his trousers, revealing his hard cock, which bobbed and danced before her face. She drank in the scent - it was still thick with the smell of sweat from when he had been masturbating, his precum staining the air faintly as she leaned forward to gingerly kiss the very tip. She smiled up at him with her eyes, her white hair drawn back to reveal her features as she planted her lips against his tip again, and again, his length bobbing in front of her in response, occasionally seeming to slap against her lips and smear his precum across her dark features.

When it did, she would simply collect it with her fingers, feeding it into her mouth, making a show of it. She was clearly intent on teasing him, pointless as it was. He didn't respond with any obvious show of lust. He didn't plead with her to suck his cock properly. He just stared down at her with a withering expression, sizing her up as though her teasing him, drawing it out, was just an unwanted annoyance.

It produced what I can only assume was the intended result - her eyes narrowed with determination, her mouth falling open. She swallowed his whole cock into her mouth in a single neat motion, Ylantar's hips absently bucking at the sudden, sharp sensation. His hand reached down for her head, grasping a bunch of her ivory white hair, simply grinding her in place. Saliva dribbled freely out of her mouth, as his balls slapped against her chin, but she didn't complain. Just the opposite: her hands reached up for his ass cheeks, firmly gripping them, as she wetly swallowed around his cock, her tongue flapping against the underside.

Naturally, I kept him from coming. Given his clear goal of convincing Aunrae she wasn't woman enough to properly satisfy him, I even went so far as to prevent him from having the autonomic responses associated with a near-miss orgasm, the frantic pumpings of his hips, the wild gasps and grinds. I didn't want her to become confused and believed he had simply ejaculated directly into her stomach, after all.

For a minute or so, Aunrae was perfectly content in her position, gently massaging the length of the rod in her mouth with swallows intended to coax an orgasm out of him, her fingers trailing along his bare skin in a tantalizing manner. Even her eyes smoldered with lust and desire, clearly communicating her desire to make him come, to feel his throbbing length just start spraying deep inside her throat.

He responded with intensifying lust, his hips bucking against her face, wet noises escaping her throat as she glugged around his cock. She went cross-eyed, even, as his fingers simply dug into the back of her scalp and he roughly used and abused her face. There were no words on his part, no declarations of how that was good. Only these quiet, masculine noises as she jerked his cock off with her throat.

At last, he peeled his spit-slathered cock out, and Aunrae began to stroke it expectantly, pointing it directly to her wide open mouth. Her pink tongue sharply contrasted with her ebony skin, and the look of incredible confidence that she was about to get a thick creamy load of cum all over her face and mouth...

Only to find, after nearly a minute of frantically pumping her hand up and down his length, that she was not getting any cum. She wisely did not complain, instead simply slurping his cock back into her throat, bobbing up and down with frantic force. Her breasts seemed to jiggle and bounce from the sheer intensity she put into it in terms of raw physical force. That wasn't the only talent being brought to bear, though - she also kept her tongue wiggling about inside her mouth, and occasionally would shift her body to show off her ass in a way that left no doubt that she was attempting to arouse tantalize him with the possibility of sex proper in order to get him to come more quickly in her mouth.

The longer it went on, the more tense Ylantar became. Each thrust of his hips against her face, each grind of his fingers along her scalp, represented an increasingly intense desperation to ejaculate, a simple yet intense physiological response to his inability to orgasm.

Aunrae had begun to notice that her fellatio appeared not to be provoking the full response. Her expression became more intense, eyes narrowing as she all but glared up at him. Her fingers dug into his ass cheeks, and she just slammed her face up and down his cock, her own movements matching his to intensify each thrust, each withdrawal. Saliva dribbled freely out of her mouth, and yet, despite how hard she was going at it, no tears were produced by her eyes, no choking gags by her throat. She was completely, utterly calm as she worked him over like that, not the faintest sign of distress at being treated so roughly.

Still - she was only a mortal woman, and Ylantar was completely incapable of coming. Even his frantic groans of "come on, come on," didn't dissuade me from continuing my restraint of his orgasm, so eventually Aunrae seemed to realize he wasn't coming, and peeled herself off his cock.

By that point, she was a bit of a mess. The spittle she'd ejected from her mouth on this or that occasion now coated her chin, as well as having created a sort of spray pattern near her mouth. Some of her hair had been tangled up from his fingers, rather than remaining in her braid. Her sclera were pink with exertion, her whole body lightly stained with sweat, some drool having splattered down onto her tits, making her dress cling to them tightly, revealing every contour of her bosom.

Ylantar's cock was slick with her saliva, shiny and dripping with the sheer quantity of drool that it had been drenched in. Her hand reached up for it, beginning to stroke his length in regular, smooth movements, as she let out faint sighs and stared up at him with a mixture of exhaustion and a still-intense desire to please. "Is something the matter?" She reached for her breast with her free hand, crumpling the supple flesh beneath her fingers, clearly just wanting to make a show rather than doing it for her own pleasure. "Is there something more you want from me?"

I could practically feel the trembling of Ylantar's body as he resisted the urge to keep going. Instead, he grasped her by the hair, tangling it up around his fingers and yanking it back, his hard cock twitching right in front of Aunrae's face. If it hadn't been for me, he almost certainly would have ejaculated then, coating Aunrae with a coat of white paint. He used the grip to force her to look him in the eyes, even as he leered down at her with some cruelty in his gaze. "I want to be able to fuck Qilanna. You're making that hard, and it's clear you aren't nearly as good at giving blowjobs as her."

"I can- I can keep going," she said, clearly taking offense at the idea, and Ylantar simply slapped her cheek with his length, making her jerk in surprise.

"Stop having your son fuck up my training. One woman isn't enough to satisfy me anyway," he said, though it was honestly a lie. He was quite satisfied with just Vicolene or Qilanna - I imagine his problem was more the specific reality of being asked to satisfy himself purely with a woman whose company he didn't enjoy.

"I'll-" she cut herself off, her neck tightening... then she slammed herself back down his cock again, glugging loudly as she facefucked herself with unbridled intensity. Her fingers clawed and scraped along his ass as she did her best to make him come by replacing technique with force. While he groaned and twitched in pleasure at her work, he did not come. I'm certain he would have blown his load at least a dozen times if I hadn't been preventing him from doing so, but he maintained the pretense that it was purely due to Aunrae's inadequacies.

So when, a few minutes later, Aunrae was gasping and panting, leaning up against the wall, her face messed up once more... Ylantar simply began using her face without her active participation, pinning her against the wall and slamming his length all the way down her throat, holding her in place to simultaneously choke her and to satisfy himself. Her throat intermittently swallowed and gagged around his length, and her tongue meekly and weakly slapped against his length. Her eyes rolled up, and tears began to form for the first time since she'd begun, as her body twitched and jerked in that position, as she slowly but surely asphyxiated.

She maintained her determination until the very end. She didn't slap him to try to get him off of her, didn't use her magic to do so - instead, she simply passed out. It was only then that Ylantar peeled back, staring down at her as her unconscious body fell to one side, sputtering and coughing as she began to recover her senses. He stared down at her harshly. "I'll fuck you if your son stops bothering Qilanna."

"O-okay," she panted out. He just put his cock away and left her there with a promptness and speed that made it obvious where he wanted to be.

When the two of us were back in his bedroom, he groaned, pulling out his length and beginning to stroke rapidly. "Let me come," he hissed, needily, and I did so - almost immediately, he started to ejaculate, a great torrent of cum that had been built up by nearly an hour of intense, orgasm-denying sex. His entire body trembled, and the pleasure overwhelmed us both for a long few seconds, no real thoughts or communication passing between us.

Once his orgasm was finished, and he'd simply collapsed on his bed in exhaustion for a long couple minutes, he spoke up. "If you keep helping me, then I'll keep your presence a secret from others."

 _I accept your offer._ It was more or less what I'd wanted from him even when he hadn't known about my presence, after all.

"That means that if I need 'assistance' like that, you'll do it, and the same goes for the use of magic at critical points," he explained.

 _I understand_.

"Good. Good." He laid down and just let out a long sigh. "I can't wait to fuck Qilanna again."

* * *

He didn't have to wait long. Their very next training session, the two made long and rather tender love, their bodies intertwining with one another, Qilanna giving giddy praise to his talents as a lover as she was thrust into again and again. "Your sweet length penetrates my depths so delightfully, I had so missed it." "Ah, that is it, spread your seed in my fallow fields, Ylantar." "I hope that my body offers you one tenth the ecstasies your own body offers me."

He fucked her for the better part of an hour, doing his best to bring her pleasure even as he relieved himself with her body. By the end of it, she had come over a dozen times, and he had come five of his own, her sex dripping with her juices and his both, staining the ground beneath them. He at last peeled his length out of her, tucking his cock away, and taking a moment to breathe, balancing his body against the door to the shed where they had been training - as much to block somebody else from entering as to catch his own breath.

"You are... perhaps the most talented lover I have ever been blessed enough to enjoy," Qilanna explained, her fingers idly running through her hair. "It is a wonder, that such a young man is so... flexible, eager, insightful. Few boys your age are capable of doing much besides lie there." She wore, for a brief moment, a lopsided smirk. "Not that I mind too much when the boys just lie there," she added. "There's a certain primal pleasure to it."

"I can imagine. I do enjoy it when you lose your senses and become inert."

She let out a laugh all her own. "I'll try to take that in the spirit it was intended," she said, "rather than as the insult another less charitable woman might find it to be."

"I'm glad to hear that I can be lazy in my phrasing with you, Qilanna," he said, as much friendly flirtation as a genuine statement of his feelings. I could tell his internal emotions, more or less, so I knew that the more oblique and complex parts of dark elven social life were more often an irritant than some intriguing puzzle to solve or lovely dance to learn.

"I only care that you do not let that sloth extend to your training," she replied, closing her eyes and simply lying back as she recovered from their sex.

* * *

One might have expected any future rendezvous with Aunrae to be simply ordinary lovemaking, or perhaps some selfish extraction of an orgasm from her body. They were not - each time, Ylantar would tell me to prevent him from coming, then avail himself of Aunrae's throat until she simply gave up in exhaustion and desperation. It was clearly having what I could only assume was the intended effect, Aunrae silently growing less and less confident in her sexual talents. She tried new things quite regularly, starting to swivel her tongue around his tip and flicking at it in her mouth, removing her dress entirely to reveal her naked body, then proceeding to add in wrapping his cock in her pillowy large breasts.

(I could tell that he quite enjoyed that, because the next day, he did something similar with Qilanna.)

Each new technique was something that she was clearly pouring her heart and soul into, trying to overcome the virtually insurmountable goal of making him come. She would work hard, only occasionally offering a question or comment that was really an excuse: "Did you just get done with Qilanna?" "You shouldn't use that woman and then come back to me."

Any bile or contempt she once felt for him had vanished in the wake of the inferiority he was making her feel. Now he was the source of a potential "salvation," a reaffirmation that she was a talented lover, so she was desperate to make him happy and pleased with her. It was a more extreme version of the basic principle I had guided him towards when he first made love to Qilanna.

His magic lessons greatly improved in quality over the following month. I could also feel as his negative emotions towards Aunrae slowly waned, the woman in question working hard to pleasure him and forgetting any spiteful jockeying for position she or her son might have engaged in. She would just quietly bob on his cock, often seeming even to have given up entirely on making him come, viewing her position almost as that of a mere fluffer, a prelude to sex with (presumably, in her mind) Qilanna, useful for getting him hard and lubricated but nothing more.

He was definitely enjoying the thrill of power this change in their dynamic brought him. I could hardly blame him, though I did wonder if he planned to keep her indefinitely in this state of piteous denial, unable to make him come, or if one day he would actually ejaculate down her throat. I didn't particularly care either way - he seemed to have a better sense than me of how best to manage her feelings to keep her silently pleading with her eyes for him to come.


	7. Chapter 7

Ylantar was seated on Aunrae's bed, while the woman herself knelt before him, hungrily and forcefully bobbing up and down his cock. He maintained a schooled expression, staring down at her impassively as her throat expanded and contracted around his length. Her fingers brushed slowly along his bare thighs, her eyes looking up at him with a pitiful expression, silently pleading that this be the day he finally came in her mouth. By the way his length twitched absently in her mouth, I was beginning to suspect his constant forcing her to work him like this was actually intended purely to satiate his own preferences, not to subtly manipulate her.

When he finally left her there, himself unsatisfied, her with an aching jaw and yet more firmness in her expression as she steeled herself to do better next time, I spoke to him in his mind. _Was that necessary? She's now very positively inclined towards you_.

"I'd like to keep it that way," he said, as he found a place to speak in seclusion. "Seeing her respond like that is fun. I can barely keep myself from making fun of her."

I would point out that he had made fun of her, when he had occasionally made promises like, "If you can make me come, I'll fuck you again," but there hardly seemed much point. _Is this serving a purpose, or getting you off?_

"Can't it be both?" He rolled his shoulders. "Can we talk about this later? I'd like to go get rid of this erection with a certain someone."

I inwardly sighed, but allowed him the chance to just go enjoy himself. We could, in fact, talk about it later, and sex was enjoyable to me as well, since I shared in his sensations to a great degree. After all, his body was coated in my essence.

* * *

He seemed to really take his time with Qilanna, which I couldn't decide was out of courtesy or due to a desire to avoid our conversation as long as possible. She would up slack and panting on the ground, skin lightly stained with sweat, a lazy smile on her lips as he recuperated himself, pressed up against the door. Her eyes wandered his naked chest, down to his cock, pink tongue flashing out past dark lips in a way that suggested lustful thoughts on her part, and invited them on Ylantar's. When he recovered enough, he continued to make love to her, furious thrusts as he kissed her on the lips with all the passion and romance he could muster, making the older woman just squirm in pleasure beneath him.

It was all well and good to ensure that his teacher was truly enjoying his company, but it meant he was completely exhausted by the time he returned to his room. _Now that you're done with Qilanna, we can talk._

"I'm tired," he said, lazily waving his hand at the air as if I was some pesky flying insect he could swat away.

_That is because you intentionally exhausted yourself with Qilanna. Sadistically mistreating Aunrae doesn't serve your purposes. Now that you have her self esteem broken down, you can build it back up around yourself._

"Maybe I want to see how low she can go," he replied, with an absent smile. "Besides, she's tamed now. As long as I keep her in this state, she'll never move against me, because it would be an admission she wasn't a good enough lover."

 _That is my suspicion in part, but I doubt it can really be maintained indefinitely_ , I pointed out.

"It doesn't have to be indefinite. In a couple years, I'll be joining the army, and I won't see her for a decade. Maybe I'll let her milk one or two orgasms out of me before then. I'll have to make sure to very thoroughly reward her so she's looking forward to my return..." He smirked at the thought. It was increasingly clear to me that his logic here was entirely hormonal, doing what satisfied him, rather than rational and manipulative, doing what was in his long-term best interest.

 _Think things through, Ylantar. You can manipulate her. Direct her. Right now she is just trying to deal with the humiliation of being unable to make a teenage boy come._ I could feel his body respond to that, the faint twitch of his penis that came from that particular thought. _If you take proper action, you can turn those feelings into something more affectionate, and she'll be your ally in this house for as long as you continue to treat her well. This is the most basic element of mortals' social behavior: kindness is control._

He scoffed at that. "Whatever. I have her under control just fine right now," he said, curling up beneath his sheets in a way that made it quite obvious he wasn't going to do a single thing I'd suggested. Silent patience was my only remedy.

* * *

My occasional coaxing and prompting earned only eye rolls, annoyed scoffs, and dismissive gestures. I increasingly began to consider "misusing" my ability to control his orgasm simply to let Aunrae off, but that would only destroy whatever trust existed between myself and Ylantar. It wasn't as if the problem was simply that he didn't come - it was that he didn't have the priority of directing her behavior in a manner that was best for himself, only a manner that was best for his libido.

His annoyance at my subtle insistence that he drag his sex drive back under control and put it to better use had me spending more time silent. I wasn't annoyed - such emotions are beneath me - but pushing wasn't going to help. I would spend much of my time considering exactly how best to convince him to change the dynamics of his relationship with Aunrae, particularly during the sex itself - if I could manage to, in a moment of passion and base need, get him to orgasm, then perhaps all his barriers could be broken down? It had yet to quite work out as I'd hoped, though, and he continued his damnable pattern.

It was, from his perspective, thus completely without warning when his mother summoned him into her office once more, her fingers steepled as she looked at him. "Aunrae claims she rededicated herself to ensuring you learn, after the Nyareda seemed to rule more in your favor than her son's."

"She does seem far more enthusiastic of late, yes. I am happy to hear it has a spiritual cause, rather than a temporal one."

"Mhm. Her newfound piety does seem to be quite sincere. I am happy that my sister has so returned to the fold." There was just the slightest creeping sense of dread and tension that layered over the both of us like a sticky fog that slowly congealed against bare skin. "Tell me. What is said of a young man who sleeps with a strange woman?"

"It depends on the strange woman," Ylantar replied, with a charming smile, earning a reciprocal baring of the teeth from his mother.

"And what if he should sleep not with one woman, but with two? And not in a single incident, but across time and space?"

"That he is..." he trailed off, now fully aware of what particular kind of trap he had been caught in. His body language shifted subtly, his alertness rising from its already quite high baseline.

"In dire need of military discipline," his mother finished, straightening up. "Qilanna is an excellent guard. Her reputation is excellent, and I cannot imagine she has failed to teach you more than the average boy your age. Your aunt is a pious and earnest teacher looking out for your well-being, and again, you have just said she has been firmly teaching you - and you have a second tutor, in the form of Wehlor. Your magical talents are particularly exceptional, a fact that Aunrae noted. I think that you would be best served by joining the military now, rather than idly wasting time with people who cannot teach you."

Ylantar was silent for a moment, and in my position, I could tell his thoughts were running by at mile a minute. He eventually spoke. "Yes, mother. I will get myself prepared." He paused before rising, his jaw setting for a moment. "May I ask...?" He prompted, of some unstated inquiry that his mother knew well enough.

"I was directed to look into your education, and concluded that your sessions with Qilanna drag on far too long. Surely just a matter of your having reached a plateau from which you cannot advance further as yet."

"Yes, you are correct," Ylantar agreed, giving a brisk bow before leaving.

* * *

In my view, the most likely individual was Aunrae - but since I had been telling Ylantar, again and again, that his treatment of Aunrae was inviting doom on him, for weeks and weeks, I decided to let him reach the conclusion on his own. He would be more likely to listen to it that way, after all.

The military of the dark elves is organized in part based on social status. The nobility, such as Ylantar, have actual teachers to inform them how to fight before they arrive, actual reputations that anyone gives a damn about, and actual wealth to spread around to ensure their sons are well cared for in their time in the army. The commoners, if they do not already know, are taught the general principles of fighting, and line up with the other men to do whatever they're told like mindless automatons.

Even where there were not formal differentiations - commoners becoming officers by esteem and a few well-placed bribes, as was the case for Qilanna, or male noble boys who were not generally given commissions, such as Ylantar - they were certainly very clearly treated differently. A boy like Ylantar was a knight, someone with training and experience who would no doubt distinguish himself in the field. A boy who did not have his social status was just a sword and a shield that might find its way transfixed to the end of some deep dwarven pike or caught within the tentacled maw of one of my lingering descendants, and there would be another where that came from.

Theoretically, any boy could manage to achieve the sort of social status that Ylantar was expected to. Practically, they had no chance. Ylantar would more likely kill a dozen similarly poorly trained boys' than fall to their blows. The dark elves knew no army that was clearly their superior, so more likely than not, he would always be well-fed, able to retreat with the main force, and pressing into the weakest part of the enemies' line. The other boys - young men, I should perhaps say, since joining the army was part of becoming a man, in the view of the dark elves, though some were even younger than the already quite young Ylantar - would be the chaff that fell on the enemies' spears, not him.

Of course, the army rarely went on campaign in the first place - from what I had picked up, the dark elves saw at best one campaign in a year, and often not even that. Even when they did campaign, they rarely met the enemy in battle, instead making winding, circuitous routes around them. Ylantar had monitored the military's comings and goings quite intensely when Vicolene had joined, and... there had really been not much of either. He had concluded that she had been given some garrison posting somewhere and simply left to the work.

So, the primary effect of being sent to the military, at least in the short term, was having to sleep in a barracks with dozens of other similarly aged young men, rather than having the opportunity to fuck Aunrae and Qilanna regularly. The other young men did look up to him, of course, given that he was the highest ranking individual in the entire barracks, and only one or two others were even of noble status. But, I rather suspected, given the way that Ylantar uneasily shifted and rolled about on the bed, that his true, primary concern at the moment was the sex that he was not going to be having.

* * *

As there was no training expected of them, there was nothing to do. They were isolated from the city at large, and subjected to military discipline, but that was really all. It was boredom that began pressing down on Ylantar's mind first, not fear. He found little joy in being fawned over by commoner boys desperately trying to cling to him as a life raft if battle ever did come. He made friends, of course, as was expected of him, participated in what team building there was to be done, but it was obvious to me that he would rather be back home with Qilanna and Aunrae, enjoying sex with them both.

I received no apology or admission of fault on his part before one of the officers found an opportunity to speak to him alone. Her name was Shyntae, and she was commoner born, having risen into the officer class by distinguishing herself in some battle, killing three foes and capturing another during the rout. She had a pretty face with bright brown eyes, nicked with a single scar that traced along her upper lip, giving her a slightly-lopsided smile and subtle character. Her body was fit, trim, but she lacked in height, coming up only to Ylantar's shoulders. At a glance, I would have estimated her to be in her mid-twenties: further into her term of service than Ylantar, but probably still in her first decade. More mature than him, but by no means truly mature, even by the standards of the dark elves.

"I was curious if you have any patrons in the army, as yet," she said, in a stern voice. Patronage was common, an officer building up connections among the soldiery. I did not know if Shyntae had skipped to the front of the line by some merit on her part, some idleness on her competition, or if Ylantar was simply not so desirable a bachelor as one might think, but she was the first to bring up the subject with the young soldier nonetheless.

"I do not, ma'am," he responded, his spine straightened up, his hands on either side of him. She looked him up and down, leering in a manner that made it obvious what her interest in him was, her own hands clasped behind her back.

"You imagine you're too good for it, then, I suppose? Men like you always do."

"I'm afraid I don't understand your meaning, ma'am."

She stepped towards him, her expression grim. "You don't understand my meaning?" He shook his head slightly. "I can't hear you."

"I don't understand your meaning, ma'am," he repeated, clearly and loudly.

"My meaning, pretty boy, is that your mother sent you here more than a little prematurely. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because you're so smart and strong, she figured her lovely little baby could do the most good if he got in the army right now? Is that what you think?"

"No, ma'am," he replied.

"I'll tell you what I think. I think that your mother got embarrassed by you." He did not show it physically, but I could feel the pang of displeasure as it coursed through his system. "Now, everybody's a gossip among the officers, but nobody heard of you doing anything like humping a holy statue of the goddess or slapping some highborn girl in the face. Nobody heard much of you at all. Only person who knew anything, knew you'd been betrothed to some noble girl. That right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now, some of my compatriots proposed that maybe you were sent out here so that the marriage could be secured that little bit sooner. But I don't think that. I think..." she pressed one finger into his chest, but it wasn't to push him, or intimidate him: the finger began to rapidly trail along the contours of his body, almost feeling him up as it slid slowly this way and that. "That it was something more private and embarrassing. But what can a boy your age even do? Must have been something private, so either you were beating the servants, or you were fucking them. Were you beating the servants?"

"No, ma'am. I also-"

"I didn't ask for anything other than an answer to my question," she snapped back. "Now, even some libidinous cretin can have value to us officers. I've been watching you. You've got a good sword hand, some decent talent as a sorcerer. The rest haven't been paying you the least bit of mind, figuring they can get better elsewhere, men who aren't completely ruled by their lusts. You won't be finding any other woman who will consider coming your way, on account of your reputation."

It was obviously (to me) a hard sell - she was exaggerating to convince him to go along with her. I told Ylantar as much, and he retained his plastic expression, unable to respond due to the woman in front of him.

"Now, here's the deal: if you accept my patronage, I can make sure you're well taken care of. If you don't, well, I doubt you'll get another offer this good, given your... _reputation_." She let the word linger in the air for a moment. The implicit threat, I believe, was that she would slander his reputation further if he refused her.

I could feel his length idly throb in his groin - the barracks was not a good place to receive sexual relief, after all. _If you're going to do it, you may as well pretend to like her_ , I pointed out, worried that he might repeat his error with Aunrae.

"I'd been hoping to attract the attention of such a beautiful woman as yourself, ma'am. I consider myself very fortunate."

She smiled at that, and it seemed sincere, guileless - as if she had no suspicions at all that Ylantar might be exaggerating his feelings for her. She reached up for his shoulder, clapping him on it firmly. "Good. Come with me," she ordered him, and soon enough he was drawn into her quarters. As an officer, she had a proper room. The moment they were inside, she locked the door behind them, a certain rapacious glint in her eyes. Her stern, disciplinarian mien vanished in a heartbeat, replaced instead with something far more animalistic, like a hungry wolf about to devour its prey. "Strip."

The order was bare bones, but it lacked the sharp note her words had thus far, lust congealing around it instead. Ylantar began to remove his clothing without much more thought than that, and Shyntae's eyes drank him in with obvious desire, running along his bare chest, his toned stomach, down to his currently hard cock. She smiled particularly sharply as she saw that, stepping forward to him, her fingers wrapping around it. "You're already hard," she whispered into his ear, beginning to gently stroke up and down his length. "You should count yourself lucky that I've been eating my silphium, or you'd be about to become a daddy. How old are you, Ylantar?"

"Fifteen," he breathed out, and she growled in fierce desire, her teeth digging into his neck with a sudden, forceful movement, grinding down against the bare flesh there and making him shudder as he was marked. Her hand on his cock moved more and more swiftly in response to his words as well, clearly excited to have such a young flower as her own. When she finally pulled her lips and teeth away from his bare skin, there was a faint pang from the lingering impression of her forceful movement. His length twitched absently before her.

"Mmm..." she leered up and down at his body. "A boy your age isn't likely to be any good at cunnilingus." Ylantar had acquired quite a bit of experience in it, from Vicolene and then Qilanna, but he did not correct her. "Tell you what. If you tell me what you are, I'll ride you until you come your brains out. I know that's the only thing you really care about, isn't it?"

"What I am?" He asked. _She wants you to verbally degrade yourself_ , I offered, making his expression mildly shift. _You should know what she wants. Just imagine the sorts of things you'd want from Aunrae._ His lips thinned for a moment, and Shyntae's expression shifted as she began to get irritated, preparing to explain to him what sort of task she'd intended. "I'm a horny idiot who can't control his cock."

She pounced on him, slamming him down against her bed as she sent him in an unbalanced mess backwards. She tore off her own clothes with manic alacrity, her eyes half on his body, and half on the mark she had left on his neck. The moment she was naked, she simply slammed herself down into his pelvis, letting out a shuddering groan. She was _tight_ , intensely so, a mix of powerful lower body muscles and lack of use meaning that when he cunt squeezed, it was a vice, wrapped taut around his whole length and leaving a mind-numbing pleasure in its wake. I naturally acted to prevent him from coming prematurely - if I hadn't, he likely would have orgasmed on that first stroke, if not the second.

"Mmm," she hummed softly, just holding herself there. It gave him a moment to admire her body: fit, lean, petite. The scar on her lip was the only visible one, giving her face character, while the rest of her was that of a muscular pixie, her hands soon finding their way to his bare chest, dark skin against dark skin, before she started to ride him properly, pumping her whole body up and down his length with ever-increasing intensity, panting softly as she did so, pink sex just faintly visible from the right angle, a glimmer of color on an otherwise dark body.

She couldn't be described as anything other than frantic. Her eyes were wide, brown irises surrounded in a sea of white as she rode him with force that was intense and exaggerated. "Ah, that's, that's it," she panted out. "Fuck, fuck, yes, this is, fuck," she growled, her fingers suddenly digging into his shoulders, her eyes leering down at him as her lips curled up, her tongue briefly flashing out. "You're mine now, you got it? I don't, I don't give a fuck if you're, if you're a noble, I-" was as far as she got before Ylantar reached out with a hand, brushing his thumb gently against her clit and sending her spiking the rest of the way over into an orgasm.

"You feel so good," he breathed out, a long ago agreed upon signal to me that he wanted to come. His hands shifted up to her hips, grinding her down against his pelvis, as he came in torrential waves, simply splashing his cum deep inside her as she shuddered and smiled, wearing a face of dopey triumph, the sort that can only come from someone who believes they have gotten one over on their "superior." "So very, nn, good," he groaned out, as the last few droplets of cum were wrung out of him by her tight sex.

She licked her lips, leering down at him with naked lust, her fingers trailing across his naked body with obvious interest. Every inch was a target for inspection as she felt him up, smiling all the while. "Yes... yeah, I think I can use you, if you can behave yourself, I can make your life in the army much, _much_ easier." There was a certain sinister glint in her eyes, some sadistic fantasy bubbling behind the surface, but Ylantar didn't take too much note of it. He thought, no doubt, it would be a problem to solve later, when he hadn't just come.

Given that his cock was still hard inside her, and Shyntae began to slowly ride him once more, I can't even honestly say he was wrong.

_The next chapter is available on my Subscribestar. You can access it at this link for only $3. Chapters will be posted on Subscribestar a week in advance._


	8. Chapter 8

The closest thing that the dark elven military had to actual training its soldiers were subject to was the patronage system of the officers and the soldiery. It was not, typically, something that a female officer would do herself: she would have some well-honed swordhand already present under her patronage, who could teach the new buck how to handle it. Unfortunately for Shyntae, she had none, and Ylantar was young enough that it seemed implausible he could be much good with a sword _without_ training.

Thus, Shyntae began training with Ylantar... or at least, tried to. He had been quick to grow, and had gotten an exceptional amount of training, two or three times what most boys his age would have received, from his double sessions with Qilanna and his regular sessions with Wehlor. He also towered a full head over Shyntae. The results were quite predictable: in their first duel, he absolutely smashed her.

"Alright, just trying to get a vibe for you," Shyntae said, from where she had wound up on the ground from the duel. She rolled one arm around in a way that suggested it still ached from where her shield had been struck and the blow had vibrated through, and she grit her teeth as she looked at Ylantar. "Guess you got training to go with your size, but don't think it'll be easy from here on out."

 _Shyntae will likely treat you better if you allow her the pretense that she is better than you,_ I pointed out to Ylantar, who seemed ready to utterly dominate the other girl once again. He hesitated, then quietly nodded before settling into a combat pose, meeting Shyntae in a quick exchange of blows that saw her eventually whittle her way through his defenses and land a strike on his legs that sent him to the ground.

"There," she said with a thick pant, "you see?" Each word seemed to be punctuated by another breath, her whole body a bit wobbly and off-balance. Ylantar had let her win, but he had still made her work for it. Sweat trailed across ebony skin, giving it a sharp sheen, making her light training clothing begin to stick here and there - Ylantar's eyes, naturally, began to wander her naked body with clear excitement, his tongue flicking across his lips as he saw her breasts curve and press against the cloth.

She noticed his lingering gaze, her own lips curling up in a smile, her scar exaggerating the grin. "Somebody here's... a real pussy-crazed mess... and it's not me..." she got out. She straightened out, reaching her hands beneath her breasts to just heft them. She wasn't the bustiest woman that Ylantar had ever seen, but he had _not_ seen that kind of responsiveness and eagerness before. Qilanna, Vicolene, Aunrae: they had all been willing and enthusiastic sex partners, but they lacked the kind of flagrant, uninhibited sexual aggression of Shyntae. It appeared he had a taste for it, given the way his length throbbed in between his legs.

 _If you wish me to restrain your orgasms, simply tap your palm with one finger,_ I told him. He did so, eyeing up his partner even more critically now that he was thinking in terms of sex. She strode towards him, grasping his hand by the wrist, and simply placed it in her groin, slipping it into her trousers. "Feel that?" She asked, as his fingers slid against her lower lips, her clit absently brushing against his palm, inflamed with lust. "I think you're pretty good yourself," she told him. "I'm wet for you. Aren't you thankful? After all, if I wasn't, you wouldn't be about to get to fuck me." He nodded. "Say it. Say you're happy I'm willing to fuck you."

"I'm happy you're willing to fuck as lowly a pervert as me," he told her, and she practically jumped up and down in place at his embellishment. I could feel her sex twitch against him, her clit grinding into his palm, her fingers tightening around his wrist. Her scar made her manic grin seem positively mad, and she all but forced him to the ground a moment later...

But, I couldn't help but note, did _not_ proceed to have sex with him properly. There was no insertion, just grinding her pelvis against his fingers, her eyes wild with lust, her breathing having not yet leveled out from the exertions of their little duel. She had pushed herself to beat him in their fight, and now she was too exhausted. Ylantar seemed to notice as much. "Why don't I eat you out?" He suggested, and her smirk became more smug than manic, the sort of psychological pampering that his words gave her impossible to overstate. In a society where women are expected to be dominant, it creates the fascinating consequence that they are expected to give pleasure rather than receive it - so a man offering up his mouth is quite the erotic thing.

"Hmm... how badly do you want it?" Shyntae had what was probably a regrettable tendency to overplay her hand. By the smile on Ylantar's face and the lack of any emotional negativity I could detect, it seemed that he found it cute or amusing - in any case, not something to get angry about. "I'm just not sure... it's such a big ask, letting you eat my pussy..."

"I really, really want it," he breathed out, doing his best to look suitably desperate for it. I had to commend his acting abilities, because I knew he wasn't actually filled with any great passion for her at the moment.

Still, it had the desired effect: she peeled off her trousers and underwear, shifted her sweaty, half-naked body over his face, then simply sat atop his mouth, rubbing her lower lips and clit and general vaginal region against his features with an angry intensity, her breathing hot as she did so. As his tongue began to flick and rub against her salty lower lips, her sticky thighs beginning to cling to his cheeks, she started to talk, too.

"Mm, fuck, I have a noble boy eating me out. A cute little fifteen year old noble boy, who's already got some betrothed bitch waiting for him, eating me out. This is what you should fucking do, hnn," she groaned out, her fingers gripping the back of his head, dragging him up into her, trying to get his tongue all the deeper. "I'm a commoner and I've got a noble on his back eating my pussy. That make you feel good? Make you feel like a big man, or like the whore you are? No other options, you picked me, so you get me," she said, grunting softly as she wriggled atop him, her movements growing ever more intense and impassioned, as she tried to bring herself off with his mouth.

Despite his seemingly earnest attempts... he didn't. "Fuh, fuck," she panted, after another near-miss of an orgasm, typified by the way her thighs clamped on either side of his head. "Maybe you aren't a good pussy-eater after all," she declared, and there was a certain sinister note to her words, as if really grinding it in. "Well, whatever," she muttered to herself, starting to rise, but Ylantar responded by grabbing her by the hips, dragging her right back down onto his face. "Somebody's eager," she said, languidly smirking and closing her eyes as she just enjoyed the feeling of his tongue furiously licking and lashing at her sex, drinking up seemingly every last drop of her juices he could get.

She talked, more to herself than to him, trying to get herself off by degrading the boy under her. I knew that Ylantar was actually fairly competent at cunnilingus - he'd managed to make Vicolene quite a bit, when they had been experimenting with one another - but he still failed no matter how hard he tried, regardless of what techniques he brought to bear on this particular problem. I could feel his frustration building up and up.

I did notice the irony, of course: he was now being subjected to the very same experience that he had been inflicting on Aunrae, and was getting all the frustration she had no doubt felt inflicted on him, instead. It was almost enough to make one believe that the goddess of the dark elves took as much interest in micromanaging their lives as her followers claimed; but the fact that she hadn't done anything about _me_ proved that idea quite false.

The air was filled with his little growls, his furious laps, his fingers digging deep into her thighs as he worked her over... grunts and gasps as he kept going, frantic pumps of her hips against his face, degrading words that grew more degrading the longer it took him to make her come.

"Too young, to know fuck, about eatin' pussy. Don't worry, plenty of time, to learn, you horny little whore," she told him, her voice dripping with arousal as she said it, every inch of her body trembling atop him. Ylantar just growled in increasing frustration. "Look, I wanna come too, so let me up and just fuck me," she told him, and that was finally sufficient for him to let go of her hips. She laid down on the ground - it had been quite some time since their duel, but apparently the constant cunnilingus hadn't given her the strength to recover the energy she had used up in it.

Ylantar was pent up and frustrated by the experience of failing to make Shyntae come with his mouth, and naturally the moment his cock was out, he simply slammed himself to the hilt inside her, like her pink sex was a practice target and his rod the spear he was meant to penetrate it with. She softly moaned at the sound, closing her eyes, a lazy smile that seemed all the more sinister for her scar that made it broader. "Damn, if I'd known you were this into cunnilingus, I would've got you started on pussy-eating earlier," she said, lazily drawing the words out as her body bounced up and down on Ylantar's hard cock, each forceful thrust earning another quiet noise of pleasure from her, her eyelashes fluttering rapidly.

She appeared to have an easier time coming from regular sex, because it was only a couple minutes after Ylantar had slammed his cock inside her that she first began to come. "Ah, fuck," she panted out, her brown eyes rolling up, her hands clawing at the floor on either side of her. Her legs struggled against his hands where he gripped them round her muscular, tight thighs, but he didn't stop for a second, despite the intensity of the pleasure her body was subjecting him to, as her sex wetly coiled and gripped his cock. Little grunts and pants escaped her throat, growing in volume and regularity the longer the sex went on, and there was one clear benefit to the entire affair: while she was getting fucked, she remained silent.

In the end, Ylantar drove every last drop of remaining physical energy that was in his body into a singular task: making Shyntae come so much that she would never dare mention his "lackluster" cunnilingus skills again. By the time he was finished with her, she was a naked, blissed-out mess, her skin sticky and shiny with sweat, glistening in the low light of the room, perpetual as it curled around on the ceiling. He removed his cock from her as she laid there, staring blankly up at the soft luminescence of the internal lighting. Then he tapped his palm with one finger, silently informing me of his desire: to be allowed to come.

The moment that I let him come, he immediately began to gush, spraying hot white seed all across Shyntae's face, practically caking her features in cum. She was out of it enough that she just sputtered for a moment before closing her eyes and mouth, letting him paint her ebony dark skin the milky white that it had been meant to be.

He then collapsed onto the ground, completely exhausted, and she was the first of the two to recover enough to rise, idly collecting his cum and feeding it into her mouth. "Not bad at fucking, though. That cock of yours even work right?" She absently reached out for his dick, softly stroking it. It seemed that she had not identified her "failure to please" as her own fault, and just smirked lazily as she gave him a gentle handjob and kept stroking away. When he finally got hard again... she let go of his cock, as if to tease him or see what he did.

What he did was nothing, as it turned out. He was just too exhausted to keep going, even with the obvious incentives.

The boys and girls were sorted into separate barracks, to minimize the amount of fraternization in the ranks that occurred, but any military force obviously has to work together sooner or later. It didn't mean they spent no time together, just enough that it took several days for Vicolene's presence to finally be uncovered by a chance meeting in the mess, stumbling on one another seemingly entirely by coincidence.

"Vicolene?" He asked, as he saw her face, blinking rapidly.

"Ylantar? Wow," she said, smiling, seeming surprised. "I guess the rumors really were true."

"What rumors?" Ylantar asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Oh, you know," Vicolene replied, giving him a playful wink and an exaggerated smirk. "That there's a guy here who's a noble who got pushed into early service because he couldn't keep it in his pants. And by rumors, I mean constant bragging that is pretending to be gossip, by one of the officers."

Ylantar made an unusual sound with his mouth that I had not heard before, this strange mix of a cluck and a wet popping of his lips. "Is this officer named Shyntae?"

"Yeah. I've been sticking pretty close to her," Vicolene explained. "I figured a former commoner is more likely to get what I need to know to really succeed in the army."

"You do realize I don't care in the slightest bit about your career prospects, right?" Ylantar asked, already falling back into old banter.

"I was giving you the opportunity to pretend," she said, with an exaggerated pout, as if deeply harmed by his words.

"Let's find a place to sit," he said, and she obeyed his commands, old social norms still applying even in the army. "What is Shyntae saying about me?"

"Oh, I didn't even know it was you, don't worry," Vicolene said, which for some reason did not seem to reassure Ylantar at all.

"I will repeat the question. What is she saying?"

"Is that really the same question?" Vicolene mused, clearly enjoying tormenting Ylantar a bit.

"Vicolene."

"You're less fun now for some reason," she said, shaking her head. Before Ylantar could lodge another complaint, she kept talking. "She's just saying she's got this noble boy under her patronage, he was so naughty he got kicked out of his home, but now he's naughty for her, if you know what I mean. You get it."

"What kind of things is she saying we do together, specifically?"

"Man, I dunno. Sex stuff. I honestly thought she was making it up."

"Did you think she was making it up because it was exaggerated?"

"No, it's because she couldn't seduce a dead beetle," Vicolene said. There was a brief pause, and Ylantar might have filled it, if Vicolene hadn't continued. "Though, it didn't strike me as that plausible that a guy would be _that_ into cunnilingus anyway."

Ylantar's hand opened then closed beneath the table. He had been eating her out pretty much every time they fucked, out of a sustained desire to correct his "failure" to cause an orgasm from earlier. She had continued to not come. I had concluded that she simply was the sort of woman who didn't come from cunnilingus - he had concluded that he needed to try harder to prove his worth as a man.

I did not mention the irony with his experience with Aunrae to him. The fact that he had not noticed it yet, despite his normally keen intelligence, suggested to me that he was ignoring it on purpose, and I did not want to become the annoying voice in his head trying to humiliate him further.

"Why do you think she couldn't seduce a dead beetle?" He decided on, trying to wander away from the subject of cunnilingus.

"Uhh." Vicolene said it in an exaggerated stretch. "I don't want to fuck things up the officer I'm getting on with. If she's got a sweet romantic side that's cool too."

"She doesn't." Vicolene let out an exhalation of relief. "So?"

"She's talking about making her... about making _you_ ," Vicolene corrected, avoiding whatever noun Shyntae normally used to refer to him, "service some of the other officers. She figures it'd be good for her own promotion. It's probably just talk," she added, waving her hand to try to calm him down. "She's a braggart, says things that aren't true, you know."

 _It could be an opportunity_ , I pointed out to Ylantar. He let out a quiet hum that suggested he was sincerely thinking about it, his chin setting in place as he took his time to mull it over for a long few seconds. "I see."

"Seriously, you didn't hear that from me, Ylantar. I don't want to get in trouble with her."

"But you betrayed your superior officer's trust," he said, clearly intending to tease her, but Vicolene wasn't primed to appreciate it very much. "Maybe I should tell her anyway."

"You shouldn't. She's a huge bitch."

"I wouldn't call her huge," Ylantar replied mildly, earning a small laugh from Vicolene.

"Still, she's a really good fighter. That's how she earned her way into the officer corps, you know? Killed three enemies and captured a fourth."

"I don't believe it's possible to spend as much time with her as I have and not know that," Ylantar said, earning a gentle laugh from Vicolene, her lips curling up in a smile.

"You said it." She let out a long sigh, then returned to her food.

Ylantar and Shyntae fell into a rather predictable pattern: he would try to bring her to orgasm by eating her out until his jaw began to ache, then become frustrated and fuck her absolutely senseless with every last bit of energy he had before finally orgasming inside her. The dynamic seemed mutually beneficial - she came plenty, but didn't seem to actually mind flopping around if it had been preceded by that sort of foreplay; Ylantar, on the other hand, was benefiting in that Shyntae was enjoying their sexual relationship. I rather doubt she would be enjoying it so much if he didn't feel a need to prove himself to her: he had been quite short-sighted with Aunrae, and she fit closer to the profile of Aunrae in his mind and emotional state than she did to Vicolene or Qilanna.

Shyntae had gotten done dining with the other officers. It was an important social ritual, but the vast majority of officers were women from the higher social stratum who had not even had to distinguish themselves in battle. That meant that she always came back frustrated, emotional, and she was the sort of person inclined to take out those emotions on Ylantar, so I predicted yet another iteration of the same old exchange.

Rather than opening with something like "Get on your knees and eat me out, I'm angry and horny," however, she did something different. "So, this girl, Vicolene, you know her?"

"I do," Ylantar admitted, a certain stiffness entering his body language. He had spoken to Vicolene again a few times, talking and chatting, but their relationship had not returned to its sexual angle.

"You ever fuck her?" Her expression was unusual: I would not have called it jealous, or angry. It seemed tense, yet excited, as if she had a problem that she thought needed to be solved and wanted to get to the solving.

"I never had coitus with her," he replied honestly.

She quirked an eyebrow at that, then realized his allusion. "You have done sexual stuff together, though, right?"

"Not since joining the military," he said, trying his best to protect Vicolene even as he resorted to honesty.

"Yeah, I'll bet. That dick of yours don't work by the time I'm through with you," she said, her cocky smile once more exaggerated by her scar. Her finger absently traced out the air. "Would you like to fuck her?"

"You are more than enough woman for me, ma'am," he replied.

She rolled her eyes. "I know that. I was asking if you'd like to fuck her, as in, if I called her in here and told you two to do the things you used to do one more time, would you go for it?" Ylantar clearly had no idea where this was going at all. That was obvious to both me and Shyntae. "If you don't want to, you can just get on your knees and eat me out again. Maybe this time you'll finally make me come." _Or maybe not_ , was the implicit threat.

"I would just... like to know why you are asking this question."

"Because I'm thinking about doing exactly that. Having you fuck your old childhood friend right in front of me, the way you used to." The lingering question of what exactly would happen after went unanswered. _She's probably keeping what happens next a secret so she can decide afterwards,_ I told Ylantar, borrowing off what I knew from my experience with her and him both. They were, in some sense, mirror images of one another.

"Why?"

"I didn't give you permission to ask why. Answer or get on your fucking knees," she said, snapping her spine straight, taking on a disciplinarian tone instantly. Ylantar stiffened as well in response.

"I'll... do it," he said at last, and I wasn't entirely sure his recalcitrance wasn't put up, gauging by his emotional state. There was no sense of tension left in him once those words left his lips. Perhaps he was simply playing the role that Shyntae wanted him to.

Shyntae smiled. "There we go. I know just what you are," she said, a hungry smile on her face, stepping towards him and wrapping her arms gently around his neck, fingers lacing together behind him. "You're not even upset." She winked. "You want to fuck ol' Vicky again, but you're concerned I might get pissed if you say it out loud. That's the kind of guy you are. I can tell."

Ylantar simply gulped, maintaining plausible deniability in that situation. She let her hands trail across his chest, briefly tease his cock - then she left to go fetch Vicolene, leaving him alone in her quarters. He simply took a seat on the bed.

Seeing Vicolene and Shyntae in the same room reinforced just how different the two women were. Shyntae wore a predatory grin, only exaggerated by her scar; Vicolene was more awkward, trying to maintain a pretense of military discipline despite it, back stiff and expression distant. Shyntae was actually shorter than Vicolene, as it turned out, but she seemed to loom artificially large in the room as she looked from Ylantar to Vicolene and back again. "Don't look so stiff, Vicky," she said, slapping the girl harshly on the back. "Didn't I tell you that it was good news?"

"Y-yes ma'am," Vicolene replied, swallowing.

"I heard from Ylantar here that he never fucked you. You are eating your silphium, right?" She added, and Vicolene nodded. "I decided to be nice and let you two get out all those feelings you never could before." As Vicolene seemed to hesitate, Shyntae's expression sharpened. "I mean, unless you don't want to," she said in a tone of voice that left little doubt there would be negative consequences for not doing so.

"I do," Vicolene replied, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Shyntae let out a small bark of laughter at that. Ylantar's cock idly twitched in response to the pair's behavior - this was his first time experiencing anything like a threesome, after all, and he clearly was attracted enough to both women to give them plenty of oral attention. "Right then. Ylantar, why don't you show off that body of yours to Vicky? I'm sure she's missed being able to see such a sexy specimen of manhood."

Ylantar rose from the bed, towering over both women but obediently beginning to strip himself naked. Shyntae's eyes wandered with familiar lust, while Vicolene seemed more shocked by the whole thing going on in front of her, eyes widening subtly as she saw his bare chest exposed, his abs seeming to get the most focus. Her lips parted, soft pink tongue - the same soft pink tongue that had been pleasuring him back during irrumatio and fellatio - just barely visible as she stared with open lust at his naked body. When his cock came out, she got down on her knees more out of old instinct than anything else, earning a bark of laughter from Shyntae.

"Mmm. I guess you can give him a blowjob, if you want. Doesn't seem like he deserves one of those, given he's such a crappy pussy-eater, but hey."

Vicolene swallowed back whatever words she was going to say, glancing up at Ylantar with an expression that could be interpreted as reassuring, something like, _You're a great pussy-eater, don't worry_. Then she slid her mouth down his length, sighing softly as she did so, her mouth taking each additional inch in a slow, grinding movement, her throat swallowing wetly around his cock as she took him to the base. Her tongue flashed back and forth on the underside of his length, and she looked up at him for approval - approval she got in the form of Ylantar groaning, his hand reaching down for Vicolene's hair, softly running through it.

"I suppose it's appropriate," Shyntae said mildly. "After all, he's a noble boy, you're a commoner. You should be on your knees for him. Plus, he's got an officer patron - that'd be me - while you're still just a common soldier." From the way her body twisted subtly in place, Shyntae's words were quite arousing to the woman in question. Vicolene just closed her eyes as if to ignore her, and that just incited Shyntae further, sadism dripping from every new word she spoke. "That throat of yours must make a pretty good masturbation aid, if it got you thrown in the army and then him sent out here only a little later. That is how it went, right? Your tight, wet throat got wrapped around that cock of his a few too many times..."

Vicolene just diligently bobbed up and down his length, her expression one of grim determination. Her gaze was on Ylantar, seemingly demanding that he come right then and there. Ylantar didn't, however, and I wasn't inclined to let him, either: Shyntae had wanted the two to _fuck_ , not to give and receive oral.

"You know, I've never had a cock in my mouth," Shyntae said. "It just seems gross to me, to be honest. But if you're into that kind of thing, then you're into it." Vicolene was holding herself down on Ylantar's cock at that point, hands having gripped his ass cheeks firmly as she did her best to suck and swallow around his length, to get him to ejaculate directly down her throat. "Anyway," Shyntae said, simply taking hold of a tangle of Vicolene's hair and tugging her up and off his cock by it, making her sputter wetly, spit spilling out of her mouth, eyes wide, as she was peeled off. "I didn't tell you to suck him until he came right down your throat. I told you to fuck him. This'll be how you lose your cherry to your childhood crush, right?"

Vicolene's eyes went down to the ground, her breathing becoming shallow, and Shyntae just laughed, looking up at Ylantar, giving him a jerk of the head that made it clear what he was expected to do.

"Come here, Vicolene," he said, grasping the woman under the arms, hefting her up to her feet unsteadily. He started to strip her a moment later, revealing more and more obsidian black skin to the cool air of Shyntae's office until she was naked in front of him. Then he laid her out on Shyntae's bed, giving his patron one quick look - and earning a grin and a wink from the woman in question.

"Go on. Take your childhood friend's cherry right in front of me," she said, licking her lips hungrily. A moment later, he was teasing his cock at Vicolene's slit, her pink sex dripping on his length. Vicolene herself swallowed, staring up at him uncertainly for a long few seconds.

The brief pause ended when Ylantar leaned down to kiss her forcefully on the lips and simply slammed his whole length inside her in a swift, forceful stroke. She grunted into his mouth, letting out a tiny noise of shock and surprise, then quietly melted beneath him as he began to vigorously fuck her, pumping in and out in a regular, methodical pace, his balls slapping against her thighs from the force of each movement. Her tongue began to dance against his in the space between their mouths, and Ylantar firmly gripped her ass cheek, his other hand grabbing the back of her head to hold her tight in a long kiss. Her own hands reached up, trailing along his bare skin, in the beautiful moment of sexual intimacy.

"He's not really going at you as hard as he does me," Shyntae noted with some curiosity. "Guess he's trying to be gentle with you, since you're a virgin and all." Vicolene let out a soft noise, almost a whimper, but Ylantar's cock simply throbbed and twitched inside her at those words, his own sadistic predilections seemingly not caring one whit whether it was Aunrae or Vicolene on the receiving end of degradation. "With me, he really likes to take his time, too. Ram it in repeatedly, make it last forever - my pleasure's just that important to him. Wonder how long it'll take him with you?"

 _Do you want me to let you come quickly? I think that Shyntae would prefer it if you did._ Ylantar tapped two fingers against the back of Vicolene's head, a silent statement that I should wait for her to come twice before doing anything like that. I noted my assent and let the two get on with it.

So it was that he made sweet, vigorous love to Vicolene, her hands trailing hungrily across his back. Her fingers would trace out the shapes of his shoulderblades, or run down along the smooth bumps of his spine. When she came for the first time, her nails clawed and raked across his bare skin, her legs snapping around his hips to grind herself tightly against him; when she came for the second, her hands both grasped and held the back of his head, moaning loudly into his mouth as she did so. I let him find release alongside her, spraying his cum into her waiting sex, her breath in his mouth intoxicating and rolling around against seemingly every surface it could find.

When he was spent, he broke off the kiss and pulled out of her, turning to face Shyntae. "Ready for a real woman?" Shyntae asked. At some point she had stripped herself naked, and I could see her wet sex glistening in the light, Ylantar's eyes naturally drawn to it.

"I was born ready," he told her, earning a soft laugh and easy smile as Shyntae moved to straddle his naked body, teasing her wet sex at his cock. She leaned forward, kissing him on the lips, more a brisk thing meant to lay claim to her territory than anything of sincere romantic intensity like what he had been putting into his kiss with Vicolene.

It sufficed for her, though, and she slid herself down his length, swallowing him up with a low moan, her eyes gently closing and lidding as she took him to the base. Once she was there, she wiggled her hips around, opening one eye and glancing over at the supine form of Vicolene, who lay there, still panting after her repeated orgasms. I could feel her pulse around his length, her sex tightening for just a moment as a little thrum of arousal went through her at the sight of the other woman. Shyntae's eyes then turned back to Ylantar, and she kissed him on the lips again, this time more fiercely, her tongue invading his mouth, and his own tongue replying in kind, flapping against hers.

As they made out like that, his hands began to wander her body, sliding up her muscular thighs to her firm ass, groping and squeezing the flesh there with obvious interest. She faintly moaned back against him, wriggling in place, their tongues dancing against one another in their mouths as they kissed. Each firm pump of her hips was accompanied by a squeeze of his hands, their bodies soon falling into a rhythm with one another. Shyntae's gaze was as often on Vicolene as it was on Ylantar, and it was clear she was getting off on being watched, exaggerating her movements and noises each time she looked Vicolene's way, as if to catch the other woman's attention and demonstrate to her exactly what she was doing with Ylantar.

She popped her lips back from Ylantar at last, sucking in a few breaths, her hands resting on Ylantar's shoulders for balance as she smiled at him, that same lazy, lopsided smile as always, her movements slowing for a moment. "Normally you go at me harder. Don't tell me that you're too shy?" There was the flash of a threat in her eyes, and Ylantar's hands slid up from her ass to grip her by the hips. "Just wanted a bit of foreplay, huh?" She asked.

"That's right," Ylantar agreed easily, then began to furiously fuck her up and down his cock, his expression turning into a snarl of intensity as Shyntae began to bounce on his cock. Her white hair flew up and down with the sheer force of his repetitive thrusts, her lips opening wide in a soft moan as she got furiously fucked like that. Wet breaths escaped her throat, filling the air as she was furiously fucked up and down on the bed, which began to ripple and squeak. Vicolene quietly rose from her position, collecting her clothes, and neither Ylantar nor Shyntae moved to stop her.

I do not know if either of them even noticed her movements, as she got dressed and left Shyntae's quarters - there was the faintest twitch from Shyntae when the door to her quarters was closed, her eyes turning over to where Vicolene had been resting, so I had to assume she hadn't noticed, but by the lazy smile on her lips, she didn't much care. Despite being furiously fucked at that point, she managed to tilt herself forward, meeting Ylantar's lips with hers once more, softly moaning into his mouth.

Whatever her insensitivity to cunnilingus was caused by, it did not apply to frantic coitus. She came, over and over, as she was furiously fucked in that position, her juices oozing out over Ylantar's hard cock. Ylantar himself growled and groaned as he took her like that, just pounding away at her body, enjoying as moans escaped her lips, her head casting back, her brown eyes curling up, her mouth falling open. Her tongue flopped unsteadily around in her mouth, until he pulled her forward, letting her head come to rest on his shoulder, her soft breaths gently tickling his bare skin.

After a couple dozen orgasms on her part, he erupted inside her, a low groan escaping his throat as he did so, his hips bucking, her back arching, as hot seed sprayed out inside her waiting sex, practically filling her up.

He collapsed on his back in the afterglow, hands aching, chest rising and falling, Shyntae draped across him in a parody of intimacy, her lips idly caressing his neck. Whatever sly smile curled its way across its lips, whatever cruel thoughts bubbled in her mind, he was far too preoccupied with catching his breath to much care, and just lay there, dead to the world, merrily oblivious.


	9. Chapter 9

Ylantar idly rubbed his aching jaw. Once again, he had been made to perform cunnilingus on Shyntae, and once again, he had failed to make her orgasm. His frustration at the failure was palpable, a texture layered over every other sense, stiffening them, making things stand out or die down. Shyntae was no longer present, and he had simply been left in her office. He had already cleaned himself mostly up with her washing tub and cloth, clearing away her juices from his face and cock, removing his own sweat from his body. He squished his fingers against either cheek, as if to calm himself down, before starting to get dressed once more.

"It's impossible," he muttered to himself, clearly speaking about the problem of making Shyntae come with his mouth. "Well, maybe if I..." he trailed off, his fingers idly making a small circle in the air. "I don't suppose you have any thoughts?" He asked of me.

 _None you want to hear_ , I replied.

"What's that mean?" When I didn't immediately respond, he let out a sigh. "Tell me, Ephaliat."

 _This is what Aunrae experienced when she was with you, you know_.

He didn't offer any verbal response, though I could feel his muscles tighten. Perhaps, inwardly, he was considering simply bashing at his own head to get me out of it - I cannot say for certain. At last, he sagged again. "I suppose you're right. Nyareda is enacting her long justice on me, hm? Twisting fates so I can experience what I had done to my aunt? Or-" he paused, expression suddenly sharp. "Do you mean that like me, Shyntae is..." he trailed off.

_No. I only had just enough energy for one host, you - and you are my first. There is no chance that Shyntae is also contained within me._

"I guess it's divine punishment, then." Ylantar twisted his lips on his face. "I had always thought she had only eyes for women, anyway."

 _Hmm?_ My inquiry was one born of curiosity. I had mostly ignored the words spoken at various holy rituals to the goddess Nyareda, for the simple reason that she had killed me and I had no interest in venerating her.

"What?"

 _Why would the goddess Nyareda have eyes only for women?_ The gods were things beyond mortal sex, perfect and hermaphroditic, blending male and female in a way that was too abstract for mortals to understand.

"I... she just does? All her priestesses are women." Ylantar seemed baffled by the question, having taken it as assumed that priestesses were all female. I had seen some of those first priests raised up by the gods - the mortals that became the humans and elves and all the other races, after me and my cohort had been slain and cast down, the world reworked. They were male and female. Even Nyareda's.

_I thought that was because the women run your society._

"That is because only they can hear her voice and channel her essence."

It did not make sense to me, but then, destroying and reshaping the whole world so a strange batch of four-limbed things could take it over had not made sense to me either, and that hadn't stopped me from being killed for it. _I see. Then I suppose I am lucky to have been taken in by a male._ There was a certain idle spark of what might be called fear at that thought - the nearness to which I had been to making a critical, deadly error and losing my life for it coming through sharp and clearly. _I do not believe this is her involvement - your legends say she tried to kill me, why would she not simply finish the job instead of humiliating you._

"Maybe you're just a voice in my head, and I really am simply crazy," Ylantar suggested. "Or perhaps a few thousand years are enough to salve a grudge, as far as she's concerned."

 _Your gods are abstract beings beyond grudges. They are driven by purpose, not emotion, and their purpose included my death._ I was closer to the beings that their gods had made than their gods themselves were. I had flesh, I had form; blood and ichor were analogous. Their gods were beings of pure shape and form, above and beyond simple matter. That was how they had slain me and those like me, after all. They did not change.

"Perhaps it doesn't any longer." He shrugged, standing up and stretching his aching body now that he had cleaned and gotten dressed. He opened the door, silently signaling an end to our conversation as he stepped outside once more.

Shyntae was talking to one of the other officers, and he paused as he saw the two, seemingly too caught up in their conversation to turn his way. Shyntae wore a smile that looked more awkward than sincere as she laughed at a joke from the other woman. "So funny." She shifted her posture. "There is- well. I was planning to attend an officer club meeting. Will that be a problem?"

The other woman arched one pale eyebrow, looking at her. "You are an officer. No one can stop you from coming, at least not before the eyes of Nyareda."

"I just thought it would be good to build the sororal bonds with my fellow officers," Shyntae explained, in a way that made it obvious that she had not done so very effectively. Whether that was due to her personality or her social station, I cannot say. "I had an idea to... make a good impression."

The other woman let out a soft chortle at that. "I see. I, at the least, will be looking forward to it," she said, though there was just the hint of mockery in her voice, as though she were hoping that the other woman's idea failed utterly.

"I hope not to disappoint, then." She gave a nervous glance back towards her office, then immediately shifted her expression as she saw Ylantar there. "Ylantar! How long have you been standing there?"

"Ah, I just exited your office, actually," he explained. At her nonverbal cue, he approached the pair, glancing at the other woman. Somewhat older, perhaps in her mid-forties, with white hair and a cool expression as she looked him up and down with some hint of approval. "I am Ylantar va Jehalaora," he explained.

"He is my understudy," Shyntae offered quickly, trying to place her social status as clearly above Ylantar's. Whether it was a desperate move to elevate her position or something else, the result was much the same: it clearly had only a negative effect on the woman's view of Ylantar.

"I am Jantana va Zaphraun. It is good to see a Jehalaora working hard to rise from the ranks of the common soldiery."

Ylantar wore a smile he didn't feel. I could feel the scarcely constrained anger. "And to see a Zaphraun at such a high post, at such a young age, as well," he replied, with a small nod, returning her barb with one of his own.

Her expression twitched, for just a fraction of a second. "I will see you later, I think, Shyntae," she said, with a brisk nod to the woman in question, before departing.

Shyntae's lips curled on her face, an expression of anger as she watched her superior officer go, having been trying to butter her up only to have that ruined by Ylantar. Or by herself, or the impossibility of the task she had set before herself - but I knew which one of those she was going to be blaming. She dragged Ylantar back into her office, her expression radiating hate as she stared him dead in the eyes. "Ylantar. You will not be repeating that showing." She poked him, sharply, in the sternum. "Your behavior reflects on me."

"I merely complimented-"

"I don't give a fuck about your stupid goddamn noble games. I need, to get in good." I knew as well as Ylantar that getting in good relied on her learning to 'give a fuck' about noble games, but neither I nor Ylantar offered that correction to her perspective. "That means that you are going to behave yourself, completely, in the future. Especially the near future." She was livid as she spoke, but there, she took a moment, drawing a few breaths in, settling her hands on his shoulders. "This is an opportunity for me, and for you, to make a good impression on all the noble officers. People always, always, want something from you. They can spit on you one day, but if you show you're useful, their opinions change the very next. _You_ are going to be the thing I provide them."

"I don't understand," Ylantar said, actually swallowing in response to how close she was, how sharply she was speaking. Even if she was smaller than him, it wasn't as if he could strike a superior officer. Dark elven society _deeply_ respected rank and position, even when the superior was a commoner and the inferior a noble.

"You. Are going to be the entertainment for every single one of the officers who wants it."

His eyes squinted, seeming not to understand what she was getting at. "I am not much of a poet." Poetry was one of the major pastimes practiced by the dark elves.

"Good. Because you won't be reciting poetry." She straightened herself up, staring him dead in the eyes. "You'll be offering up your body to whoever wants it." Ylantar simply stood there in confused silence that stretched out for long seconds. "Women behave differently after a good fuck. Your job will be to get them in a compliant, good mood. To make them associate that compliant, good mood with me. And to then take advantage of that compliant, good mood, to ensure that I am going to be promoted, well-treated, and continue to rise through the ranks. Do you understand me?" She asked. Her voice was sharp.

"I don't-" he started, then stopped. "I'm not a-" he stopped himself again. It was not a situation he was accustomed to, to be fair. He was young, too.

"You can use this for yourself too. Make them like you as well. It's win-win." She shrugged. "Don't fuck me on this, and I don't even care if you somehow manage to worm your way into some other officer's confidence." By the way she said it, it was clear she didn't expect that to happen at all. "Just make them think, 'ah, Shyntae, she's the one who trained that hot little noble boy, I should do something nice for her.' That's all you have to do, and all you have to do to do that, is do exactly what you did with me, and with Vicolene, for them."

Ylantar swallowed. "That isn't how it works. The- I mean, nobility, that is. They don't..." he trailed off, unable to express his feelings well in this situation which, to him, was quite absurd.

"I have been in the army for almost ten years. I know how it works. I know all the nasty little things they don't tell their golden boy children like you, the ones who come with training and awareness of how to fight, who are all ready to prove themselves valiant crusaders for Nyareda or stalwart defenders of home and hearth. The grime that gets under your fingernails after your first battle, the way the blood specks clot on your bare skin. I scratch their backs, and they scratch mine. Maybe you were told that wasn't how it works, but there is nothing so fundamental as the principle, 'One good deed deserves another.' You've probably been taught it's all blood. It isn't. So." She straightened up. "Are you going to do what I tell you to, or are you going to get to learn about what it's like to be a soldier without a sponsor, like all your commoner bunkmates?"

The silence stretched out for several painfully long seconds. Ylantar took in a deep breath, then exhaled. "I'll think about it," he told her.

By the smile she wore, she clearly thought she'd hooked him completely with her spiel, and that it was only a matter of time before he agreed. I myself wasn't sure she was wrong. "Don't take too long. This officer club meeting is after services."

'Services' being the long, drawn out religious rituals, done every ten days, which fortunately did not involve Ylantar. I had thought it due to his youth or relatively low status in the past - the servants didn't attend, only the nobles - but I was beginning to suspect it may have been partly because of his sex, instead. The next was in five days. "That- I think I can have an answer by then."

"Good."

* * *

_You should take her up on it._

"I should sell my body?" Ylantar practically hissed the words out, surprisingly offended by the idea.

_You have already been using your body to get in good with your superior officer. You could have used it to control Aunrae, but you decided to be... childish about that. Are you going to be childish about this, too?_

"That was different."

 _Is it really?_ He appeared to be seriously considering, so I let the question linger in the air. His lips thinned in thought. _If you do well enough, you can get a new superior officer, who won't whore you out. If you refuse, you'll have a much harder time managing that._

There was a long silence. "Pride is for lions. We're a different sort of beast," he said, letting out a long breath. "I guess you haven't heard that one," he added, with a stretch. "My mother told it to me when I was young. I don't think I ever really understood what she meant, until now."

 _Does that mean you'll do it?_ I prompted.

"It does."

* * *

The officer club meeting was held in a small reception area adjoining the war temple to Nyareda. It was filled with soft, expensive seats, and stunk of various strange plants. The tang of alcohol stung at the senses as well, but not so powerfully as the swill of smoke. Shyntae held Ylantar's upper arm tightly, her fingers digging in with obvious nervousness as her gaze flicked across the officers. They looked at her like she was some strange curiosity, a bauble available for sale from the surface, or something of that ilk. She straightened up, presenting, as best she could, an impression of confidence.

It did not fool even me.

Her presence did not produce some silence at her unwanted visitation. Attention did not naturally fall upon her; it flowed around, occasionally bouncing against her just as it might anything else. She looked out for something among the crowd to latch onto, and at last she found it, quickly approaching the woman in question.

"Lady Erellice," she said, when she arrived there. Erellice was a somewhat matronly woman, a curvaceous but lithe figure. Her eyes had the tingle of interest in them as she inspected Ylantar and Shyntae both. More interest in Ylantar, and more carnal interest, at that. Her gaze ran across his muscles, his chest, like a beast sizing up its prey's flesh, already planning which parts to pick off and chew. "This is Ylantar. My understudy."

"The..." Erellice trailed off, one finger rising into the air as she recalled but decided not to say whatever Shyntae had called her.

"The very same. I noticed you enjoyed taking a look. You can look all you like," she added, smiling with a mix of warmth, generosity, and deference.

Erellice's eyes wandered freely. They drank in his form like he was a delicious wine, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air as if she could smell his sexy body rather than the stench of tobacco and hashish and alcohol mixing together. She pursed her lips as she considered him, gently leaning forward, eyes focused utterly on him. Her hands slid across the table slightly as she leaned forward. He kept himself still and steady, his heart rate level, his gaze returning her own no matter how much she lingered on this or that, no matter how she sighed or breathed.

"Perhaps you weren't lying. I think I would like to see him in my quarters, yes."

Shyntae smiled at that, more with relief than anything else, giving Ylantar a sharp slap on the back. "Good. Good. Now?"

"After we're done here." She paused. "I could talk to him, if he's a bother to you. Hearing current goings-on in Jehalaora would be quite interesting."

"If you wish, Lady Erellice," Shyntae said, giving a bow and pushing him forward gently. "I will let you two become better acquainted."

Ylantar nervously sat down next to Erellice. She smiled as she saw the slight hesitation and nerves, collecting from the table in front of her a thin rod of rolled-up paper. She offered it up to him. "It calms the nerves," she explains. "Quite expensive, but we trade our own expensive things to the surface dwellers. Try it." She offered the object to him, and he took it, placing it in his mouth. She lit the end. "Just breathe it in, then out. You may-"

He started to cough before she could finish her thought, hacking for several seconds.

"Cough, yes. How do you feel besides that, Ylantar?" She watched him try a few more times to suck down the thick air, hacking each time, his eyes beginning to water. "You don't have to smoke it if it isn't sitting well with you," she said, yoinking it away to smoke herself, making it obvious that it wasn't some cruel trick she was playing on him, the thing did work - just not for the inexperienced, it seemed. "You didn't answer my question?"

"Mm?"

"How do you feel?"

"Oh. I thought you meant regarding the..." he gestured.

"Cigarette," she replied, taking a long, lazy drag herself. "The goddess asks we keep ourselves attentive for her services, as we must be on the hunt, and so on," she said, "but afterwards, we can do as we please, and so we calm ourselves with cigarettes and drinks. How are you feeling, Ylantar? That is the third time I have had to ask, and you have yet to answer."

"I feel fine, ma'am." She quirked an eyebrow, clearly not satisfied with that answer. "I am obviously unused to being in an officer club meeting, but, Shyntae is my sponsor and she is looking out for me. You, also, are clearly trying to be kind, to share something so valuable to someone so humble as I." I did feel something positive, hearing him belt out lines like that with such ease - knowing that he had, at least, the capacity to suck up at an appropriate time, no matter his personal feelings.

Erellice let out a small laugh at that, then took another puff of her cigarette. "Yes. We are all trying to be kind here, I suppose. Shyntae is trying to be kind. I am trying to be kind. But... are you trying to be kind?"

* * *

Erellice pushed Ylantar down onto her bed, her breathing ragged, her eyes wild as she drank in his naked body. She was still totally clothed, her fingers trailing along his bare skin with obvious desire and interest, dissecting him almost casually. Her soft breaths filled the air, her shoulders rising and falling as her fingers slowly made their way southward, to where he was erect. His middle finger idly tapped against his palm, a quiet signal to me to make sure that he didn't come prematurely, as Erellice's fingers came to wrap around his hard length.

"You're hard for me," she said, with a smile. "Already hard," she added, her fingers smoothly moving up and down his length. "Just as horny as Shyntae claimed, it seems like," she said, her head tilting with an idle curiosity as her gaze ran down to his cock. Her tongue flashed along her upper lip. "Are you the sort to come fast, or slow? Don't lie." She winked as she said it. "If you're the type to come fast, I'll use my mouth, finish you off once, that way you last longer the second time."

"Come fast," Ylantar lied. "At least, the first time. I have much better endurance the sec-" he was cut off as Erellice simply swooped downward, wrapping her mouth around his cock in a moment. She pressed her nostrils into his groin, her throat wrapping tight around his dick as she crawled into the bed atop him, finding a position in between his legs.

Her mouth worked wildly, frantically - her tongue swished back and forth on the underside of his cock, her breaths occasionally flashing out. She bobbed, pumping up and down as she went, staring up at him all the while. Even though she was clothed, she gave a show with her body, ass waggling back and forth, full and firm and attracting almost as much attention from Ylantar as her eyes, which remained completely locked on his. He let his pleasure show, not holding back, his hips bucking. She wetly glugged around his cock as his balls slapped against her chin, and his hand reached down for her head on instinct, grasping and grinding her into his pelvis.

He had given me no signal to let him come, so I held back, for a little while. "Fuh, fuck, ah, your mouth's so good," he groaned, tensing seemingly every muscle in his body. Her eyes smiled up at him, warm, delighted to be so complimented. He still gave no signal to let him come. Her cheeks hollowed, sharply, as she just _sucked_ around his cock, gathering up the air around it and making his whole body twitch and jerk. He moaned in pleasure, eyes closing as he did so. His legs began to frantically kick at the air, threatening at any moment to simply lock around her head and hold her down there.

It was then that I released my control over his orgasm, and he immediately erupted, firing load after load of cum down her throat, eyes rolling up as his whole body twitched. He let himself fall slack the very moment he had finished coming, his chest rising and falling with desperate, heaving breaths as the older woman rose. "That was a little longer than I had expected," she noted, as she idly wiped her chin. "But not too long." Her fingers stroked his cock for several seconds, her smile broadening as she saw it was not becoming flaccid. "Oh my. Are you ready to go already? This _is_ impressive."

She moved, then, to strip, revealing her curvaceous flesh. She had a hint of muscle to her still, but it was clear she lived a quite sedentary lifestyle as an officer, her body showing off full breasts that gently sagged with fat rather than tighten and shrink from an intense exercise regime. Her pink sex gently dripped as she positioned herself above him, an untamed white bush covering her groin as she moved to tease the tip of his cock with her lower lips. "Do you want it?" She asked, her voice soft, her expression gentle but teasing. He nodded rapidly. "I can't hear you," she said, grasping one pointed ear and stretching it out.

"I want it. I want you. I want to feel-" He gasped as she suddenly slammed down, taking him inside her in a single moment. She was tight, intensely so, her sex squeezing and gripping his whole length with seemingly every muscle she had in her body. Her eyes peeled back in pleasure as she twitched and jerked in place, simply holding him inside her and delighting in the moment. "Ha, you really, surprised me," he managed to get out, before she plugged his mouth with two fingers, idly sliding them along his tongue.

"Shh. Shh. No one wants to hear you talk right now, Ylantar. Be nice to me and be quiet. The only words I want to hear you say are 'That's so much better than Shyntae does it.'" His cock twitched inside her, earning a faint chuckle from the older woman as she withdrew her fingers from his mouth. "Hmm, not so big a fan of your patron after all, is it?" She asked, gently working her hips forward and back. "Given the way she talks about you, well..." she just smiled, a feline, predatory thing, as she moved back and forth, keeping his length almost entirely inside her and simply twisting it around and around.

For a time, she simply teased him like that, clearly getting off both on the control and the physical movements. Here and there her toes would curl, her fingers raking across his bare skin, but even if she was enjoying herself, the position wasn't bringing her off. Ylantar had tapped his palm a good number of times as if to make it very clear he wanted orgasm control this time, so Erellice stood no chance of making him come like that - and, honestly, he would not have come close anyway. She was taking her pleasure from him for now, perhaps trying to tease him for later, perhaps not.

Ylantar's hands reached up for her hips, at first gently caressing them, trying to subtly encourage her to begin an up and down movement, something that would be more intense and pleasurable for _him_ , rather than just her. She let out a soft chuckle at that, and his hand slid down towards her pelvis, thumb eventually finding its way to her clit, making her arch her back and moan faintly in pleasure before finally orgasming for the first time. Her sex tightened around his cock, squeezing taut around his cock and producing an intense sensation of desire to ejaculate, but of course he didn't. I was keeping control this time.

He kept teasing her clit, reading her expression carefully, for another three orgasms. By that point, her skin was shiny, glistening in the air, her lips parted as she panted and gasped. She started to pump up and down on his cock, then, compressing, squeezing his cock. She was mouthing words rather than saying them - "Come, come for me."

 _You've done well_ , I told him, as he guided her up and down on his cock, trying to get her to go faster, to bring him even more pleasure. _Now come before you make her frustrated. You can drag it out later._ He considered it for a few seconds, then tapped her ass with his middle fingers. I allowed him to explode inside her a moment later, and he simply fell onto his back on the bed beneath her, panting as he stared up at her.

She sighed and leaned forward, then just collapsed atop him, panting as her body pressed against his, sticky skin smushing together.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter is available on my Subscribestar. You can access it at https://subscribestar.adult/posts/283548 for only $3. Chapters will be posted on Subscribestar a week in advance.


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